AI is pushing us into the physical world

In an age where artificial intelligence was meant to free us from the drudgery of menial work and empower us to work from anywhere, the landscape of entrepreneurship has undergone a fascinating transformation. Today, with the click of a button or a few sentence prompts, you can generate almost anything you desire. Whether it's starting a business, setting up an online storefront, crafting website copy, or even generating product photography, AI tools like Shopify, ChatGPT, and Stable Diffusion have made it easier than ever to turn your entrepreneurial dreams into reality. These tools are continually improving as they ingest more data to refine their models.

The masterminds behind these entrepreneurial endeavours belong to a new generation—one that has grown up in the digital age, harnessing the power of the internet to build media, e-commerce, and software businesses right from their bedrooms. But here's the paradox: while AI has streamlined many aspects of business creation and management, someone still needs to bring these ideas to life, deliver products to customers, and oversee the day-to-day operations. Starting a business has never been more accessible, yet scaling a business has perhaps never been more challenging.

Or, are we on the cusp of witnessing a transformative shift toward a fully AI-enabled end-to-end supply chain? Imagine this scenario: an entrepreneur uses product imaging software to create a prototype, which is then transmitted to a manufacturing hub equipped with robots that craft the product. Then, the finished product is transported to a high-tech warehousing facility where specialized robots receive it and assign exact shelf coordinates. When a customer places an order, a shipping robot retrieves the item, scans it, and loads it onto an autonomous truck, which delivers the product directly to the customer, all without human intervention.

However, we're not quite living in that futuristic, dystopian (or utopian depending on who you ask( vision of a fully automated supply chain just yet. Generative AI tools have achieved mainstream adoption, but it will take years for the logistics and warehousing side of the equation to catch up.

So, could we be entering a golden age for logistics and warehousing companies? With unprecedented demand on the horizon, it seems that warehouses might become the proverbial shovels in this contemporary gold rush.

While AI has undeniably made starting and running businesses more accessible, it hasn't replaced the need for human ingenuity and effort. However, the prospect of a fully AI-enabled supply chain is tantalizingly close, promising increased efficiency and potential opportunities for those willing to adapt and ride the wave of automation in the world of entrepreneurship. Whether we're on the brink of a logistics revolution or not, one thing is clear: the relationship between humans and AI in the business world is evolving, and it's an exciting time to be an entrepreneur.