“The Magic Conveyor Belt: Supply Chains, A.I., and the Future of Work,” Yossi Sheffi, MIT CTL Media, purports to link the two title concepts. It’s a frustrating book. Yossi Sheffi is a supply chain expert and he’s at MIT. I had hopes that this would be a great book about modern supply chains and how artificial intelligence (AI) can address the challenges of the sector. Sadly, I was only half right.

Let’s start with the fun. The first half of the book is focused on supply chains. Sheffi, as should be expected from the Director of the MIT Center for Transportation and Logistics, describes both the basics and the complexity of modern supply chains in the first two of four book sections. Actually, it’s a little surprising. It’s very rare, in my experience, for an academic to be able to create explanations that don’t look as if they came from a textbook. The author, though, succeeds admirably. The first section is the basics on the supply chain and the second section talks about the complications and complexity caused by today’s global infrastructure, and it’s done at a very accessible level. This was an excellent half and created excitement for the second half.

The expectation was not met. MIT is one of the centers of AI development. I figured the author could wander over to the MIT Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory (CSAIL) and get feedback from them as to how AI could address the challenges laid out so clearly in section two. That was not to be.

The second half sections are the typical, high-level platitudes we repeatedly hear about AI. Admittedly. Yossi Sheffi comes closer to admitting it will destroy jobs, but he can’t quite do that. One example is, after talking about how there’s a partnership between people and AI, he describes “an automated warehouse the size of seven football fields” that employes four people.

Another problem is the “logic” used not long after. Remember, AI is going to remove those simple tasks and leave us with the challenging ones. As mentioned in this column last Fall, if the simple tasks are automated, how are people going to learn enough to handle the complex tasks? As a hint about the book, the flawed argument is made on page 190. Not until page 277 is there a tiny segment about the flaw in that argument.

About the only tactical discussion of AI helping supply chains is a later discussion about digital twins, and that is only two-and-a-half pages.

One, almost amusing, later discussion is the glowing description of Intel providing new and exciting career paths as an example of AI creating jobs. It might eventually do that, but it looks as if the draft of this book was written before last October’s information about thousands of job cuts at that company.

What we end up with is a tale of two halves. I think this book is good for two classes of people. First, anyone who wants an excellent, non-technical explanation of the current state of global supply chains. Since I don’t focus on that, I don’t know if there’s a book solely on that subject that is as good. The second group are people who are already in AI, people who aren’t interested in the fluff in the second half but want to see the business opportunity laid out in excellent terms. They can ignore the second half and get business ideas from the first half. If, however, you’re already very knowledgeable about the sector and want to know how AI can help, this is not the book for you. I wish this had been co-authored by Yossi Sheffi and someone from CSAIL, or elsewhere, who could have helped focus the AI section on the tactical details of using the technology to help the sector. It would have made for a wonderful book.

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