On Wed, Oct 17, 2007 at 10:48:31PM +0200, David Orban wrote: > > During the Summit there was a stunning prediction, if I am not mistaken by > Peter Thiel, who said that the leading corporations on the planet will be > run by their MIS and ERP systems. There is no need for a qualitative change > for this, and still it will potentially be a very dramatic impact on the > hierarchies of enterprises, and the white collar jobs they employ.
My impression is that, to a fair degree, this is already the case for the airline industry, and the retail/wholesale relationship. For decades, airlines have been slaves to thier pricing/scheduling algorithms, which figure out what to fly where and how often. Failure to obey the algorithm will bankrupt the airline in short order (witness the turmoil after 9/11, where the algo's didn't quite understand the changed nature of the marketplace). Similary, the movement of products through walmart and home depot are also controlled by "narrow AI" type data-mining, sales-forcast, ordering automation software. So is the loading of trucks, and the routes taken by trucks. Failure to follow the output of your sales forcast algos will likewise cause you to loose a lot of income pretty rapidly. Use of datamining and optimization algos will only increase. Manufacturing uses algos to do "just-in-time" parts ordering. Robots put things together, and robots wander loose in warehouses. Packing slips/bills of lading are automated, and so is billing, and accounts receivable/payable. Remember some of the Y2K fiascos? e.g. in 1995, a paint company computer decided that paint cans with an expiration date of 1/1/00 were expired, and ordered workers to dump out fresh cans of paint as they rolled off the assembly line? I heard they actually dumped some of it, until a supervisor put a halt to it. What I find more interesting is the question of whether, if, how, when, and in what way these systems might become "self-aware". --linas ----- This list is sponsored by AGIRI: http://www.agiri.org/email To unsubscribe or change your options, please go to: http://v2.listbox.com/member/?member_id=8660244&id_secret=54767315-ef9e6f
