Shipping Storm Hastens Drive to Automate Supply Chains

After beating humans at checkers, chess and Go, computers are now gunning for one of the more complex games yet: supply chains.

Covid has upended global trade networks, and the disruptions show little signs of fading. The usual ways in which companies sourced and delivered their products, such as filling Excel spreadsheets, waiting for months to sign contracts with warehouses or manually sorting packages by zip code, have suddenly become liabilities. The techies argue there’s another flaw: that they’re run by actual people.