Closing Keynote: Artificial Intelligence Dangers in Supply Chain Mgt: What Will You Do When Supply Chain Professionals “Outsource” Curiosity & Imagination to AI?
In an era where AI promises unprecedented speed and power, the real competitive advantage in supply chain management won’t come from algorithms alone. It will come from supply chain management professionals who know how to think. AI is rapidly reshaping supply chain management, yet many professionals are rushing to adopt it without the experience or discipline needed to steer it responsibly.
Famous astrophysicist Carl Sagan warned us what happens when powerful technology lands in the hands of people who can’t question it – we slide into darkness while believing we’re walking into the light. That’s exactly where supply chains are headed if we keep letting professionals outsource logic, curiosity, and even basic comprehension to AI tools they don’t fully understand and can’t validate. The danger isn’t that AI will replace us – it’s that we’ll willingly replace our own critical thinking with AI, long before AI even tries.
The organizations that will dominate the next decade won’t be the companies with the biggest models; they will be the ones…
- With the sharpest minds… people who know the physics of supply chains
- Who can interrogate AI
- Challenge it!
- Push AI as a TOOL in the toolbox to its limits – they will shape it to their needs and bend it to their will
The future belongs to supply chain organizations that pair advanced AI with deeply trained, critically minded talent, what I call “Augmented AI,” where human expertise remains the driver and AI the amplifier.
The remaining people are just accelerating toward bad decisions at the speed of automation. If you’re not investing in your people’s logic, depth, and supply‑chain mastery, then AI won’t make your supply chain smarter – AI will simply help you fail faster, louder, and more expensively than ever before.
Participants will receive an action plan that describes how trained Supply Chain professionals can effectively use AI tools effectively.
