An interesting new applied AI startup crossed my radar yesterday. The company is called Didero, and they’re building a suite of AI-powered tools which help mid-market companies manage their supply chains. So imagine, say, a small chemicals manufacturing company that needs to manage its supply chain, but which is too small to spend tens of millions of dollars on an enterprise-grade supply chain management system. You can imagine a scenario in which this small company offloads much of the administrative management of its supply chain to an AI. Its human employees, then, are free to focus on more profitable and productive labor. That may sound boring, but it also serves a critical need.
Didero’s approach appears to be a horizontal, rather than vertical, one. They do not appear to be targeting a specific industry, like, say, chemicals manufacturing. Rather, they appear to be building a suite of products for any and all mid-market companies struggling to wrangle their supply chains.
Personally, I’m a fan of the vertical approach, but I can understand why a company like this, which has courted venture capitalists, is pursuing a horizontal strategy. Horizontal markets tend to be larger, and most vertical software companies end up expanding beyond their initial vertical to become more of a horizontal company.
One of the venture capital funds which invested in Didero, Construct Capital, offered their thoughts on LinkedIn:
Didero is creating the first autonomous supply chain, leveraging AI to centralize supplier information, streamline communication, and automate repetitive workflows. Their platform is designed to integrate seamlessly with existing systems, transforming unstructured data into actionable insights and freeing up supply chain teams to focus on strategic initiatives.
It has been clear to me, for a while now, that AI will allow companies to radically restructure their workflows, and offload a lot of boring scut work to silicon. Humans can move up the value chain and focus on more profitable and productive activities.
Outside of supply chain management, I expect one area where you will see AI enabling people to move up the value chain is in the practice of law. Many pundits forsee a future in which AI replaces lawyers, but I see a future in which AI complements lawyers. I see more advanced AI taking over much of the boring scut work of the practice of law. This, in turn, will allow lawyers to focus on more productive and profitable work like client relationships.
And, I suspect that this pattern will repeat itself across many different industries. I see advanced AI not as a replacement for human labor but rather as a complement to it. Doomsday predictions about AI replacing all the people is fun, and it certainly garners headlines, but I don’t think it’s what will end up happening.
This having been said, people will clearly need to adapt. Those who learn how to work with AIs will benefit, and those who refuse to learn, or simply can’t, will flounder. I expect much resistance amongst the rank and file tasked with learning a new technology, and I expect many news articles in which people gnash their teeth and rend their garments. But, we see the same thing happen any time a new technology distorts labor markets. Luddites, after all, got their name from a movement in England in the 19th century, in which mill workers destroyed machinery which made the factories which employed them more productive.