NRF conference shows AI challenges and rewards

02/04/25 • 26 min

The National Retail Federation conference (NRF) launches just as retailers are cleaning up from the holiday shopping season. This year there was a focus on how technology can empower employees while reducing customer friction. Sheryl Kingstone, Rich Karpinski and Jordan McKee return to the podcast to share their insights on the conference with host Eric Hanselman. Traditional in-store retail concerns are a big part of NRF and innovation in Point of Sale (PoS) technologies, like softPoS and the integration of biometrics were on display. For the latter, there’s still the issue of consumer trust, as well as onboarding requirements. The show also saw an issuing bank debut its own PoS offering.

The promise and the challenges of AI were a large part of the conference. Delivering on AI will take infrastructure upgrades and retailers are looking at building ecosystems across technology vendors to share cost and risk. Digitization is going forward as logistics look to move from picking products to smart warehouses that can sense products. AI mastery can create a competitive advantage, but it requires the integration of a lot of moving parts.

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Credits:

Host/Author: Eric Hanselman
Guests: Sheryl Kingstone, Rich Karpinski, Jordan McKee
Producer/Editor: Kyle Cangialosi and Odesha Chan
Published With Assistance From: Sophie Carr, Feranmi Adeoshun, Kyra Smith

More S&P Global Content:

Credits:

Host/Author: Eric Hanselman
Guests: Sheryl Kingstone, Rich Karpinski, Jordan McKee
Producer/Editor: Kyle Cangialosi and Odesha Chan
Published With Assistance From: Sophie Carr, Feranmi Adeoshun, Kyra Smith

Previous Episode

Consumer Electronics at CES

The annual technology fest that kicks off of the year, the CES conference (formerly known as the Consumer Electronics Show), showcased the latest consumer technology, from smart glasses to smart homes. Neil Barbour and Stefan Modrich join host Eric Hanselman to explore what made an impact and what’s happened to technology debuts from previous years. The metaverse headlines of a couple of years ago have transformed into augmented reality. ChatGPT hasn’t been integrated into any cars, yet, but agentic AI is being rolled out.

Much of what’s on display at CES is a vision of the future. The transparent TV’s last year were early prototypes and this year they’re on the market, albeit with a hefty price tag. There is more that’s taking place behind the scenes in consumer interactions. Advertising is becoming more digital and smart devices are the new frontier in engagement. Media purveyors are looking to link consumer experiences across devices. The omnichannel strategies of the past have been realized in multi-screen engagement today. They are becoming the next retail channel in new and different ways that create opportunities, as long as businesses can master the technologies required to capitalize on them.

More S&P Global Content:

Credits:

Host/Author: Eric Hanselman
Guests: Neil Barbour, Stefan Modrich
Producer/Editor: Kyle Cangialosi and Odesha Chan
Published With Assistance From: Sophie Carr, Feranmi Adeoshun, Kyra Smith

Next Episode

Ethical AI Data

Ethical concerns about the use of AI have to start with training data. Too often, the primary concern is simply generating sufficient data, rather than understanding its nature. Emily Jasper and Abby Simmons are back to continue the conversation started in episode 198 with host Eric Hanselman. With generative AI, the data is the application in its most formative sense. Unlike traditional application development, where the expectation is that functionality will be expanded in later releases, GenAI applications require careful design of training data before training takes place. The perspectives contained in data age rapidly and model training doesn’t differentiate between outdated and current indications. Old data can effectively poison model outputs. Businesses risk alienating customers with models that are trained with data that don’t properly represent them. This is particularly true with marginalized communities, where language and context can change over shorter time frames.

While there is research work on model retraining, work in AI today has to focus on effective data quality management. DeepSeek is causing a significant rethinking. Human data cleansing can be effective, but can’t scale to AI demands. Data workbench tools and synthetic data approaches can help, but better automation is needed to ensure that data sets are truly representative. Data collection and data sourcing need much greater attention to ensure that model results can engage the target audience and not be a liability. It’s a fundamental question of accountability that requires thinking in ways that are different than legacy development processes.

Mentioned in this episode:

More S&P Global Content:

Credits:

Host/Author: Eric Hanselman
Guests: Emily Jasper, Abby Simmons
Producer/Editor: Kyle Cangialosi and Odesha Chan
Published With Assistance From: Sophie Carr, Feranmi Adeoshun, Kyra Smith

Next in Tech - NRF conference shows AI challenges and rewards

Transcript

00:00:00.289

Welcome to Next in Tech, an S&P Global Market Intelligence podcast where the world of emerging tech lives. I'm your host, Eric Hanselman, Chief Analyst for Industry and Company Data at S&P Global Market Intelligence. And today we're going to be discussing the National Retail Federation's conference. Hot on the heels of this last tech conference, the CES. It'll be interesting to see where the parallels are similarities. I suspect we may be talking a little bit about AI