Illustration by Tag Hartman-Simkins/Futurism. Source: Getty Images
Whole Foods shelves become empty after one data breach Close your wholesale distributor. Meat packers working for JBS Foods are paralyzed $11 million ransomware attack Takes out their processing facilities. Stop & Shop and Hannaford have approximately 2.2 million employees personal data exposed As a result of a cyber attack on parent company Ahold Delhaize USA.
This scenario, straight from a william gibson novelsare becoming increasingly common in supply chains around the world. as recently Noted by Mohammed AlzuhairA doctoral candidate in Business Administration at Durham University, the increasing number of grocery store failures is not a coincidence, but the result of AI’s dangerous penetration into the global food network.
In bygone era, food came directly from the farm and garden to the general store -The only middleman was a clerk whose storefront served as an easy rallying point for consumers. Today, the supply chain is like a web of contractors and wholesalers, where each shipment is insured based on risk algorithms and tracked by transportation management systems.
Just as AI is being pushed into every other aspect of our lives, it is also arriving at every point in the supply chain, turning already vulnerable systems into automated security nightmares.
Alzuhair notes that the number of businesses choosing AI automation over human-level supply management has increased significantly in recent years.
As One study foundAI is now deeply embedded in all six stages of the UK food system: supply, production, processing, distribution, consumption and waste. Farms around the world are turning to it precision agriculture model Powered by AI, it is said to track data of individual plants and animals and all the logistics involved – from seed procurement to harvest, livestock feed to slaughterhouse.
This is all well and good if we are only concerned about productivity. But as the rise in destructive cyberattacks becomes evident, the increasing reliance on AI also has the effect of removing human judgment from the supply chain. When a cyber attack occurs Make changes in digital records of shopsThere are very few employees who know how to right a ship. In many cases, Alzuhair writes, human supply chain manager They are no longer being asked to override automated shipments or intervene when discrepancies occur in their jurisdiction.
The consequences of all this can be catastrophic. If a worst-case scenario occurs — a cyberattack, a natural disaster, an Internet outage — there may be no human workers left with the skills that once kept food on the shelves.
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