Comment by LeonM | Hacker News Reader

Comment by LeonM | Hacker News Reader

I worked for a large grocery store chain between 2004 and 2010, there the AI had already taken over. Though we didn't call it an AI, just 'the system'.

The system was able to procure goods with stunning accuracy. Sometimes it even surprised us. For example: we'd receive a much higher number of BBQ meat than typical, only to realise it was going to be amazing weather the coming days.

The system was also making schedules for the re-stocking team with the same accuracy. It knew what it ordered, the exact time the truck was due to arrive, at which time the personnel was available (not at school, for example), etc. The system told us when to show up, and when we had to be finished.

The system was even able to pinpoint cashiers that were stealing money from the register, by correlating cash count of the individual registers to the schedule (which the AI also created). It would then 'isolate' the suspected employee to a single register and order a cash count (which was done by hand) at the end of the day.

Basically the only reason why there still was a manager was for responsibility and babysitting (most employees were teens that did dumb stuff). And the occasional Karen who wanted to talk to a manager.

I remember being being thoroughly impressed with the efficiency of the software back then. In some ways it must have influenced my career path (I now work in automating businesses). I left in 2010, I can only imagine how much more advanced this system has become since.

Sounds very much like a lot of predictive analytics places like walmart do. Walmart has spent hundreds of millions on solving the problem of getting stuff into stores just before it's needed, and some of their work on weather modeling, yearly holiday predictive impact, etc is very interesting, and just a bit scary.

Walmart likely had data on which states were covid baby boom states and which ones were baby bust states well before any of the rest of us had even a sliver of an idea how fertility would play out during the lockdowns.

That sounds like truly valuable ERP, and largely devoid of AI.

Why devoid of AI? Not being combative here, genuinely curious

Perhaps devoid of machine learning, given the year, but even that seems unlikely if the anecdote is true.

If predicting and planning outcomes and with previous data is not some form of AI, what is?

Agreed on the valuable ERP thing, though. There’s a reason SAP is as expensive as it is.

> If predicting and planning outcomes and with previous data is not some form of AI, what is?

Algorithmic forecasting.

If you squint really hard, the entirety of computer science falls under "AI". But practically speaking, today AI refers to ML.

It's quite possible a savvy programmer integrated the weather forecast to the ERP, with specific products tagged as relevant to a sunny (or wet) outlook. That's not AI, that's just an algo.

It's also possible there was ML at play, but that's not clear, and not necessarily the case.

You need a demand forecast for the weather so at least stats was used. Maybe linear regression?

>practically speaking, today AI refers to ML.

But it shouldn't and it won't.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AI_effect

Oh, ok. If you go with the definition that says that AI is what tries to solve any problem that is still not solved well enough to be useful, then yes, useful software doesn't have it.

AI is a pretty useless name, anyway. Since no two people will agree on its meaning.

Anyway, I doubt people tagged what products are most sold on good weather. That's the kind of thing that is almost always discovered by statistic analysis. (We call some statistic analysis "machine learning", while others that do the exact same thing we don't.)

The predictive planning _could_ be done with AI that tries to automatically infer what will be bought. However, it could also be done by a (maintained) list of hard-coded rules. If it was some form of automatic inference, perhaps one could call it AI.

I simply don't think a hand-designed decision tree for a specific task can be called AI.

> That sounds like truly valuable ERP, and largely devoid of AI.

Yes. That was kinda my point. Most of the time, it is just a good piece of software, not an 'AI'. In fact, for most situations you do not want an AI, because you want to the software to behave predictably.

My point being is: good software has been replacing need for humans to manage processes for a long time now.

"In fact, for most situations you do not want an AI, because you want to the software to behave predictably" is very good statement that very very often is skipped from discussion. Thank you.

A lot of algorithms that used to fall under 'AI' are now considered 'just good software'.

As soon as we really understand how it works, we no longer call it AI. (And it becomes predictable).

"AI" is to "Computer Science" what "Magic" is to "Science".

Apologies if I missed it, but where in your story did a human get replaced? There were still people working inventory, cash registers, and managing.

I say this because it seems pretty obvious that software can improve the productivity of employees (including managers). But what the blog post at the top says is that AI will replace managers as a category of employees—a much stronger claim.

Perhaps a human wasn't fully replaced but many responsibilities were. No human had to keep track of inventory, make schedules, or watch for theft from cashiers.

> Basically the only reason why there still was a manager was for responsibility and babysitting (most employees were teens that did dumb stuff). And the occasional Karen who wanted to talk to a manager.

Yes, this is my point: technology increases productivity.

Machines don't do jobs, machines do tasks. It's very rare for a company to fire people because there is now a system that does exactly what they did before, no more no less. But when you take all the core tasks that a person did as part of their job and automate them away, such that the employee now is doing something completely different, they have been replaced even though they're still on the pay roll. It's functionally equivalent to firing and rehiring them for a new position. The manager may still hold the title of manager, but if they're not doing any management tasks, then they have still been replaced.

> when you take all the core tasks that a person did as part of their job and automate them away

But that is not what happened in the story I responded to. The manager still had tasks exclusive to them (dealing with young employees and angry customers) that had not been automated away.

Tasks exclusive to them, but not the tasks of a manager. A manager manages. As OP stated, the position with the title of "manager" now has the tasks of a babysitter.

> devoid of AI

I guess that depends on what you consider AI. In his example of "good weather -> more BBQ stuff", of course that might be some particular hardcoded rule that occurred to a human at some point, but it's far more likely that datamining identified that particular correlation, and many others (like the famous example of the grocery store that started stocking beer next to diapers when data mining discovered that beer and diapers were often bought together).

Nielsen (of TV ratings fame) has been selling this sort of data mining to grocers for decades. Decades ago I worked for a small regional chain and we based a lot of decisions off that data - we could have never done it on our own.

For any item in our stores we could get a list of other items that were commonly purchased together, for example. I'm sure it's even fancier nowadays.

how lovely it is to work with Manna, the automated store manager.

https://marshallbrain.com/manna1

Ordering stuff not middle management. I seriously doubt an AI claiming MM know how could produce a 3-10 page telling me what it is. And unless AI replaced all the staff, I'd wanna be in the room to see NFW looks from people getting management direction, reviews, budgets standing on articulated customer priorities,and cross functional coordination from AI

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