The thought started in a hospital: the hospital I frequent, where the pharmacy dispenses medicine through robot hands that transport the appropriate medicine (hopefully) from one end of the room to another. Rows upon rows of medicine, and all the pharmacist has to do is reach over to the empty receptacle to claim their prize.
I wondered at the invention. But I was thinking more about the supply line and logistics. Medicine has expiry dates, of course. The pharmacy needs to keep stocked. What about countries with non existent pharmaceutical industries? How about supermarkets and perishables like fresh fruits, milk, bread? If they can’t handle it, how would family marts, or grocery stores in less developed countries? Who keeps track of those and how do they handle these problems without terrifying logistical cost?
I think – algorithms.
Through algorithms and axioms, airlines project the amount of seats it will have, and oversell so that they can reach closest to a full flight and maximize profit. High frequency trading firms programme to recognize certain patterns in stocks or forex so as to achieve maximum return. These traders trust their programmes with leveraged money to scalp a quick buck based on (a robot’s interpretation! of) market sentiment.
In the movie Fight Club, the decision whether to make a recall for a faulty part (simply put) would be to sum up the total cost of a recall and compare it against the cost of all the accidents to the firm. Potential loss of lives – reduced to dollars and cents. No wonder Edward Norton was the way he was.
Universities project the amount of spaces they can take for a certain class, for instance, I read that SMU Law had about 80 spaces but offered 180 students a space since some would likely choose other universities (NUS, UK) over SMU’s programme. Amazingly, about 88 students accepted the offer as predicted.
What makes these algorithms and axioms so efficient? When are they wrong, and who gets castigated and crucified for their error?
There are cases when these algorithms mess up. Even down to the nitty gritty of planning for events, wedding, parties: people flake. Time is wasted. Staff are stretched. The milk sits stale on the grocery store counter; they have a sale on bread, isle 6.
Despite all the nits I’ve been picking, I profess to be amazed at the improvements in efficiency that these rules of thumb have done for us. It’s beautiful that these systems work so intricately and smoothly in the background. However, isn’t there still a lot of inefficiency and wastage there? My question is, how will our generation or the generations ahead design the systems and algorithms, harder better faster stronger?