It has been over two years since I first wrote about AI and supply chain management. The launch of ChatGPT has since put AI into mainstream discussion. Some experts are predicting that AI's impact will be transformative the way the Internet was in the 90s and 2000s while others think the change will even be larger.
In Artificial Intelligence Applications in Supply Chain Management, I was mainly thinking about AI from a data analytics perspective. But after learning about programs like AlphaGo and ChatGPT, I am forced to expand my thinking from operational number crunching to really include any task that the supply chain management function may be involved with.
For example, generative AI can be used to create business templates, draft documents, develop software, and design or optimize processes. Many websites already use AI Chatbots to assist with customer inquiries. These chatbots can further be applied for cross-departmental and business-to-business communication to increase supply chain efficiency. Our imagination is the limit in AI applications at this point.
I think AI can fundamentally change the way we work. Before the existence of information technology, people were the keepers of information and knowledge. You had to memorize and master a specific domain of knowledge to be effective. Then, as information became readily available, people needed to be good at critical thinking, synthesizing information, and communication. Moving forward, leveraging AI will require an increased ability to be creative and good at asking novel questions. Because of AI, prompt engineering will become an increasingly consequential subject. As a blog about career and business, I strongly encourage you to consider ways to learn about and leverage AI, as it has the potential to replace a lot of knowledge work the way machines replaced much of the physical labour in the past.
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