
businessJul 14, 202429:28pending
Rewind: AI, Classism, and the Digital Divide - Revisiting Episode 51
About this episode
These show notes were written at a time before LLMs were available to the public, if that's any indication of
In this episode from 2017, we covered:
WILL WALMART BE COOL AGAIN?
- Lord and Taylor started selling on walmart.com with their own special homepage.
- Also, remember how Walmart acquired Bonobos and Modcloth? The world has changed, people.
THE DIGITAL DIVIDE:
- Walmart's upmarket aspirations clashed with the working-class market. Perhaps this is still true?
- Brian's unfailing optimism about the future of technology and the working class, with technology enabling efficiency and providing better products and better services.
- Robby Berman posits that AI will serve and make life better for humans, but only the top 1% of humans.
- A Princeton study on bias in bots explores how AI has the problematic ability to target people for committing potential crimes based off the bias and prejudice of the bot creators.
AI ENABLING JOB ELIMINATION?
- Chris Gardner from Forrester predicts that automation will eliminate 9% of jobs in 2018.
- "These jobs are not low-end jobs, they're white-collar jobs being replaced."
- Brian is again optimistic: a whole new host of jobs will be created for creating and servicing AI.
- Reuters reported that a son used data to recreate his dad as a chatbot.
Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.
Get every episode summarized
Each time Future Commerce publishes, we email you a written briefing from the transcript — the topics, who appeared, and any specific claims, with the ad reads skipped.
Email me new episodesFree for 3 shows. No card needed.
Hosts & guests
No transcript yet
This episode has not been transcribed. Request it and it moves to the front of the queue.
More episodes
More from Future Commerce

Retail Media In Your Ears: Inside Dollar General's 21,000-Store Audio Network
Future Commerce
Sep 2, 202639:36pending

2026 Signals We’re Tracking: Commerce Evolves (Again), the Monoculture is Back,...
Future Commerce
Aug 26, 202627:51pending

Shopify Earnings Go Wild, and American Retail is OVER.
Future Commerce
Aug 19, 202651:24pending

Enter Through the Gift Shop: Inside MoMA's Retail Journey
Future Commerce
Aug 12, 202628:47pending