CEOs lay out visions for AI uses across industries

As some industry leaders warn of the potential dangers of artificial intelligence, other executives are embracing the rapidly developing technology and say they already are finding ways to incorporate it into their operations.

In a series of interviews, six chief executives projected optimistic visions for the role they foresee AI playing in their respective industries. They also laid out ways AI could benefit customers — from restaurants to retail services and e-commerce opportunities. 

In an event Wednesday, “The Economic Snapshot: CEO Summit,” The Hill Editor-in-Chief Bob Cusack hosted conversations with United Airlines CEO Scott Kirby, National Restaurant Association President and CEO Michelle Korsmo, Kroger CEO Rodney McMullen, National Retail Federation President and CEO Matthew Shay, Altana AI co-founder and CEO Evan Smith, and Ebay President and CEO Jamie Iannone. 

McMullen predicted AI will help Kroger tailor customers’ experiences to their personal flavor preferences and also help ensure freshness through supply chains. 

“We think AI will be a huge benefit, in terms of improving the customer experience, personalizing every offer exactly for that particular familiar and understanding what flavors they like,” McMullen said.

“For us, it’s more about how do we help associates be able to do their jobs easier and how do we make the customer’s experience be more positive, more fun.” 

Already, McMullen said, Kroger is deploying test examples of 2D codes, which can use AI technology to help determine how many days of freshness a product has.

“We’re able to make sure that something that we sell to the customer has at least five days of freshness left on it when they buy it,” he said. “We haven’t scaled those types of things, but we actually are testing it in stores.” 

For restaurants, industry leaders are discussing ways to deploy AI in taking customers’ orders and also in the hiring process, as a worker shortage still persists across the industry. 

Korsmo said she just attended a conference a Chicago where restaurants were discussing the large language models needed to take people’s orders. She gave the example of a Wendy’s drive through, where people’s orders won’t always match the corporate name for the product. 

“So those large language models have to be able to process the different ways that people would order in a way that they understand how to put that order through that has as much accuracy as possible,” Korsmo said.

“It really is about, how do we do this to improve the customer experience, and in a drive-thru environment, that customer experience is all about speed, consistency, and accuracy.”

Korsmo said that AI can make a substantial difference in hiring practices. AI technology can screen applicants so that businesses can get back to applicants in a timelier manner and even set up an interview.

For airlines, Kirby said AI technology can help airlines communicate directly with customers and avoid communication hiccups. 

Smith’s startup is focused primarily on using AI to collect the data to “build the Google Maps for supply chains,” he said.

The technology he is pioneering connects previously siloed data and to create a “shared source of truth.” One could theoretically be able to ask a machine, Smith said, “’What happens to my business if China invades Taiwan?’ and have that answer contextualized.”

Iannone said eBay has been using AI technology for years, but its efforts recently have expanded.

eBay has a beta test available for sellers, Iannone said, that will identify products and write the product description for them.

Iannone said if a seller found an old remote they couldn’t identify, eBay’s AI technology would automatically write the description for the device, so that a prospective buyer looking for that remote would be able to purchase it. 

“What I’m excited by is what AI’s going to do to unlock for our sellers the ability to bring more of that inventory onto the platform,” Iannone said, adding that the average household has $4,000 worth of items that could be sold on eBay and less than 20 percent of that is being sold.

In the retail space, Shay said he sees “enormous potential upsides” for retailers, but also warned of the “potential for mischief.” 

“I think there are enormous potential upsides for retailers, in terms of delivering customized, personalized experience and increasing the efficiency of customer engagement, improving supply chain efficiencies and improving sustainability successes,” he said.

While he echoed calls for regulation, Shay said he was not optimistic lawmakers would take action, adding, “it’s really incumbent upon all of us that are going to be impacted, as citizens and as stakeholders, to encourage congressional leaders to enact an appropriate roadmap to make sure that we get the most of the promise of AI, without getting the worst of the peril.”