Artificial intelligence plays a role in the future of retail in terms of a deeper understanding of customers going beyond intuition. This week, we speak with Pedro Alves, CEO of a company called Ople, based in San Francisco. Alves was previously the Head of Data Science at a number of companies in addition to being Director of Data Science at Sentient Technologies, one of the best known AI firms in the Bay Area. Sentient has raised upwards of $200 million.

We talk with Pedro about the future of retail, the future of understanding customers with artificial intelligence. Essentially asking under what circumstances would a retailer need to go beyond intuition in order to inform their understanding and their ability to influence the actions of their customers or their users. In addition to that, Alves talks with us about what has to happen to AI as a technology to become more accessible and within reach of existing enterprises. Knowing now all the points of friction for bringing AI into an existing business, he talks about the transition points that he thinks are going to have to happen over the course of the years ahead in order to make these technologies more accessible to companies.