I’ve largely been preoccupied with how AI will influence the creation of content, where it feels destructive, but for importing and exporting, it looks incredible. Here’s how…

Predicting problems will suddenly be easy

If you are a global shipping company like Maersk then you are already fine (and are going to supercharge your business with AI), but if you are a much smaller company then the benefits will be exponential. You will suddenly be able to process huge amounts of data that could seriously improve your business.

AI can take huge data sets and make accurate forecasts about who may need your products or services and when. This can be according to geographical, historical or customer data.

But it can also take in news reports and studies from the web (like last year in July, India banned exports of non-basmati white rice and prices went crazy).

The clincher is you can take all this information and literally “talk” to it in the form of an AI assistant to help you plan your inventory, production and distribution. This will seriously drop your chance of wasting stock or not having enough.

Routes and storage feel like the easy stuff when it comes to using AI. You can analyse the cost, speed, weather and traffic so it gets there quicker. And then warehouse layout, temperature and ventilation so you can store it more efficiently (by using sensors, cameras and drones).

But AI can also adjust all of this info in real time as changes occur and it will provide you with an ongoing stream of insights and recommendations. That is the part that’s invading all parts of life with AI: a running commentary of more text and speech telling you what you should do. Though, like everywhere else, absurd answers are still possible. 

However, as someone who has finally started to tackle their own fine-tuned LLM (large language model), you can rapidly reduce hallucinations by going this route and moving away from just accessing a generic model like ChatGPT.

Customs will no longer be a headache

Going through customs always made me nervous when travelling as a kid. After being told that diplomats could basically drag a dead body through customs and no one would stop them, I wanted to be one. 

AI isn’t quite that good, but it helps.

It will automate the documentation, classification and verification of your goods. And there is also a gap around legal challenges.

AI tech for futurist automatic transportation logistics. (Photo: iStock)

It can help you comply with the different rules and regulations of each country by giving you updated and accurate information on tariffs.

AI can also help you avoid delays or fines by alerting you to any errors in what you have declared.

What I am seeing is AI will allow small businesses to tackle slightly more of their supply chains and hopefully take in more profit. 

It is going to give opportunities to people to move into certain industries that they might have otherwise found intimidating.

Your suppliers will no longer be terrible

Where AI gets interesting is when you think about what makes a good “business relationship”.

AI can help you monitor how you communicate with the people and organisations you want to keep close.

It can even draft appropriate communication in a tone that is designed to elicit the correct response.

But there is no guarantee that they aren’t doing the same back to you, so we could end up with two AI systems stroking each other’s egos for eternity.

In the news

The New Yorker ran a horrifying piece about how people can clone the voices of your loved ones to scam you. And in movies – Amazon is being sued for cloning the voices of actors during the strike last year. They allegedly did it to get the production of the new Road House remake wrapped (which, from the trailer, looks terrible).

(Created using ChatGPT)

I bought a new Rode microphone this week. It is mounted on a luxurious studio arm that fits snugly to my desk at home. The irony of buying a new mic after hearing that synthetic voices are going to ravage the industry isn’t lost on me. 

But I think the AI revolution has taught us that we love talking and listening to others do the same. If that wasn’t true, the hunger for synthetic voices would have gone the way of automated transcription, where we were desperate for the robots to take that job from us as quickly as possible. 

But be ready for voice notes to become synthetic (for people who would rather type) and even live conversations to become suspect (with the ChatGPT app you can already talk to it in real-time), especially if it is with a bank… or a reclusive family member.

What AI was used in creating this piece?

DALL·E (embedded into ChatGPT) is gradually improving (and was used to produce the images in this article). Midjourney is still the image-generating product to beat, particularly as Google’s Gemini is still hobbled by not being allowed to create pictures of people.

This week’s AI tool for people to use

The rise of the chatbot is not slowing down.

Cleo is designed to help Millennials budget their finances. It has “roast mode” that shames you for spending too much or saving too little. 

In a similar vein, there is GymBuddy which designs workouts for you.

It feels like the human race, after the pandemic, is lonely and willing to talk to anyone, even AI robots (and at the cost of handing over all their data). DM

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