Robots Are About To Infiltrate Retail And It's Going To Change Everything

September might be back to school time, but it's more like back to the future time with two technology introductions this month: 1) France is rolling out the world's first driverless bus, and 2) Lowe's in San Francisco will have a robot rolling through its aisles providing customer service.

First, the first driverless bus launched this weekend in Lyon France. I know that Mercedes launched the concept future-bus a number of weeks ago, which I covered here, but this roll out in Lyon France will be taking passengers. According to The Local of France, the mini bus will accommodate 15 passengers and will drive at a top speed of 20 km/hr. It's a small project with the total drive lasting about 10 minutes around the city of Lyon and consisting of 5 stops. This may not seem like a big deal, but, again, technology builds on itself exponentially. With the advent of the first driverless bus, we are already hurtling toward ubiquity. If you're a bus driver, you should be putting together an exit strategy into another profession. 

The driverless bus launch in France.

The transportation industry is going through a massive change in which a decent honest living driving people around in taxis or buses is giving way to artificial intelligence. But it's not the only industry being impacted by artificial intelligence--the retail industry is being hit this month as well. 

This month, Lowe's stores in San Francisco will be introducing the LoweBot: a customer service agent whose job it is to help people navigate the store and find what they're looking for. Lowe's knows it absolutely disrupting the retail industry with its AI sales rep; in fact, they have their own laboratory of ideas called the Lowe's Innovation Labs in which they've cooked up the LoweBot and other disruptive technologies. This is what progressive companies are doing these days, whether Lowe's or Uber or Tesla: designing disruption. 

Introducing LoweBot

How many people do you know who work retail? It's another way for people to find work and make a living. But once innovations like LoweBot becomes ubiquitous--probably in 5 years--where will retail workers go? When transportation and retail jobs go, what's next? The advertisement for LoweBot says that the AI will help people find items as well as track inventory, which will, apparently, free people in the store up--for what? Cutting wood, filling shelves. We already have automated check-out counters. What next?

These are jobs people take to support themselves and families. As inflation continues to climb, and entry-level jobs are given over to robots, what will happen to those who rely on those jobs to survive?

This is where capitalism and social planning come together and disrupt our world. Do these companies have too much power? Do the visionary CEOs have the right to disrupt industries dumping people out of jobs for machines? And should such events as the launch of driverless buses and robot customer service reps be given so much fanfare?

Not by me they won't.