The retail industry will be a significant benefactor of artificial intelligence-based decision intelligence, according to DI software market leader Peak AI Ltd.

The company believes that decision-making and intelligence with applied AI will revolutionize the market by allowing companies to treat customers as individuals as opposed to as a group.

“In the past, we bucketed customers into groups and just treated them all the same, which creates an impersonal experience,” said Richard Potter (pictured), chief executive officer of Peak AI. Today, however, the company “can use the machine to make decisions on a per-customer basis, and then our marketing can be amplified by that.”

Potter spoke with Lisa Martin and David Nicholson, co-hosts of theCUBE, SiliconANGLE Media’s livestreaming studio, during AWS re:Invent. They discussed why Potter thinks DI is about to become a huge new category of software. (* Disclosure below.)

Coexisting with AI

Using data effectively in retail can make the difference in customer retention. In particular, Potter referenced what he considers an irritant in marketing, where a consumer purchases a product in an ecommerce transaction and then gets hounded through advertising for exact products.

“You just start to get effectively stalked around the internet for something you’ve already bought,” he said. “It creates a negative brand effect for that particular brand.”

What one needs to do is treat people individually and do it at scale and in real time, which AI-driven decision-making software, such as Peak’s technology, can do by helping “companies perform better with data and over time.” Retail is just one vertical, he Potter added.

Essentially, he believes humans will coexist with the AI machines. “Humans in the loop is the way we think about it. Let those machines amplify us and essentially make us superhuman in what we do,” he said

In fact, he added, humans are actually quite good at making decisions. The problem, though, is that they’re not great at making them 24/7, very quickly and very consistently, which is where DI comes in.

“Humans are awesome at forecasting,” he said. “They’re awesome at choosing pricing that would appeal to other people, but we can have machines that do a lot of that thinking for us.” And do it “more quick,” he said.

Watch the complete video interview below, and be sure to check out more of SiliconANGLE’s and theCUBE’s coverage of AWS re:Invent. (* Disclosure: Peak AI Ltd. sponsored this segment of theCUBE. Neither Peak AI nor other sponsors have editorial control over content on theCUBE or SiliconANGLE.)

Photo: SiliconANGLE