Since the launch of ChatGPT last fall, people — from business leaders to everyday consumers — have taken note of artificial intelligence’s ability to change how organizations function and, ultimately, how the world works.
Generative AI is capable of overhauling the day-to-day realities of the supply chain industry by automating human-intensive processes and creating a pathway for fast-paced innovation. In order to do that, however, an AI tool must be trained to do the job.
That is where project44 comes into play.
The supply chain visibility company recently launched the industry’s first generative AI solution, dubbed Movement GPT.
“For the first time, we are training generative AI models to become experts in supply chain,” said Jett McCandless, project44 founder and CEO. “We are thrilled to deliver Movement GPT to supply chain professionals to make their work more efficient and enable them to overcome the complexities of today’s supply chains.”
Users can now have casual conversations with Movement GPT in order to identify supply chain risks and plan their next moves.
For example, a line of questioning might look like:
- Show me all of my shipments impacted by weather in northern Europe.
- What is the value of the inventory of those shipments?
- Where are those goods destined?
- Do I have more reliable routing options for my next shipment?
“Generative AI is only as good as the data used to train it. project44 is uniquely positioned to deliver a capability like Movement GPT because of its unique dataset gathered from tracking 1 billion shipments representing $1 trillion in customer inventory across 181 countries,” according to a recent p44 news release. “project44 is also the only visibility company to cover all modes and geographies within a single platform.”
In order for supply chains to work efficiently, decision makers need access to global, multimodal and real-time visibility in a single interface, something p44 is well-known for providing. Once people have access to that data, however, they also need to be able to leverage their software for rapid decision making and improvement. That is what the Movement GPT feature further enables.
Movement GPT not only delivers a valuable new solution today, it also creates a framework for further innovation as AI continues to develop.
Ongoing AI developments are expected to impact virtually every industry in the near-term future, especially when it comes to amping up productivity and the speed of innovation. In the supply chain, that will likely include streamlining many of the time-consuming daily tasks typically assigned to people.
Auto-GPT will be able to achieve these tasks by breaking them down to subtasks and looping through those smaller jobs until complete. In this way, the software will act as a powerful assistant, enabling people to focus on bigger-picture tasks.
“We are not far off from where software like Generative AI and Auto-GPT will be able to automate a bulk of tasks traditionally carried out by individuals at freight forwarders or brokers,” Andrew Sisto, senior director of innovation labs at p44, said. “In short order, we have already seen Generative AI interacting with customers, providing customs classification for products that were otherwise unclassified. I expect that soon companies will leverage Auto-GPT to autonomously file customs entries in their entirety.”
For SaaS companies like p44, continuing AI developments spark excitement because the more data that becomes easily accessible via APIs, the faster these autonomous capabilities — including those aimed at simplifying global trade — can be introduced to the market.
While AI promises to streamline workflows and speed up the pace of innovation, it has also raised concerns among many individuals in the workforce. This response is natural, and worry about the potential for job displacement tends to come up with any major technological revelation.
Workers may be able to quell their anxieties by looking at innovation through a historical lens. In most cases, major technological advancements have actually created more jobs and bolstered the labor market.
“When you look at US productivity data from the 1980s to now, productivity has grown over 60%. In that same time, you had major technological innovations such as the dissemination of personal computers, the internet, 3G, etc,” Sisto said. “During that period, unemployment has gradually declined. We have shown that as technology advances are introduced, we become more productive and more jobs are created as a result.”
In today’s fast-moving and complex world, supply chain professionals need access to the best technology available in order to thrive. Much like the cutting edge technologies that came before it, people can leverage generative AI to reduce costs, increase productivity and improve overall decision making for the customer’s benefit.
Movement GPT represents the supply chain industry’s brave first step in that direction.
“We are excited to see how our customers interact with our new Movement GPT functionality and listen to them on how we can continue to make their lives easier through future releases,” Sisto said. “We are also really excited to see what other software companies come up with and how, together, we can innovate within the supply chain technology ecosystem.”