Amazon Uses AI to Speed Up Deliveries on Cyber Monday
With the holiday shopping rush in full swing this Cyber Monday, more than 71 million consumers are expected to grab online deals, making it one of the busiest days for e-commerce giants like Amazon.
To help manage the rush, the company is using artificial intelligence — AI — to offer customers even faster deliveries.
Amazon is boasting its quickest delivery time yet, saying that packages are being prepared for dispatch within 11 minutes of an order placement at same-day facilities. That pace is an hour faster than next-day or two-day centers.
"It's like our Super Bowl, we practice for it for months in advance," said Scot Hamilton, Amazon's vide president of Planning and Routing Technology, about Thanksgiving weekend.
"I kind of like to think about AI as like oxygen," he said. "You don't feel it, you don't see it. It's what makes the magic happen."
Amazon Harnesses AI to Optimize Delivery Routes and Forecast Demand
Amazon has implemented artificial intelligence (AI) technology to analyze and optimize delivery routes, adapting in real-time to traffic and weather conditions. Additionally, the company uses AI to forecast daily demand for over 400 million products, predicting the regions where they are likely to be ordered. This advanced system, known as Sequoia, has enabled Amazon to handle over 110,000 packages a day during the holiday season, up from 60,000.
"AI will touch just about every piece of our supply chain," stated Tye Brady, Chief Technologist at Amazon Robotics. Sequoia has significantly improved inventory identification and storage, reducing processing time by 25% and enabling faster delivery of gifts ordered on Cyber Monday.
Addressing concerns about job displacement due to AI, Amazon emphasized that AI and automation have actually resulted in the creation of 700 new job types related to robotics alone. Brady views AI as a collaborative effort between humans and machines, describing it as a "beautiful ballet" that enhances job performance.
