AI in logistics: amplify human expertise for better outcomes
By Dave Bozeman
AI is accelerating how quickly businesses operate, but speed by itself isn’t always an improvement. The real advantage comes from using technology to help people make better decisions faster and with greater confidence.
That dynamic is what I’m seeing across global commerce today.
Every day, millions of decisions determine whether a production line keeps running, a store shelf stays stocked, or a critical shipment arrives where it needs to be. Tariffs change, a port closes, or capacity disappears. Or a customer may suddenly need to move twice the freight in half the time. These are not purely technology problems; they’re business problems that still require human judgment.
Managing 37 million shipments a year, we see complexity at a scale that provides a unique perspective on the high-stakes, high-consequences environment businesses operate in. At that scale, data becomes an advantage when combined with our unique context, expertise, and network. Trained on hundreds of trillions of proprietary data points, our AI benefits from a level of operational context that’s hard to replicate, enabling our teams to help customers anticipate, orchestrate, and optimize outcomes across increasingly complex supply chains. We’ve learned that how data is applied to solve real-world problems is what separates market leaders from everyone else.
Supply chains function when a chain of interconnected decisions goes to plan. When they don’t, there’s a global network of people working around the clock to restore order—people who understand every minute detail of a customer’s business: from the day orders typically arrive to what a two-hour delay on a critical shipment means for a patient awaiting care.
Imagine giving that workforce tools that predict problems instead of forcing them to react afterward. What if those tools could analyze millions of data points in seconds and surface recommendations that save customers time and money? What if the technology could also improve the quality of the work itself?
The value of AI is simple: help our people solve customer problems better and faster. That’s not technology replacing human judgment. It’s how we achieve better outcomes when technology, context, and human expertise work together.
You can’t transform a business by dropping new technology into old processes. Transformation means redesigning work from the ground up—using AI for tasks it handles best, and people for what only humans can do. AI excels at automating repetitive operational tasks. Our people excel at building trusted partnerships—trust earned one interaction at a time: an email, a phone call, a conversation about a new opportunity. Each interaction forms the basis for how our teams respond when challenges arise. When human expertise is amplified by AI, customers gain a partner that can anticipate needs, navigate complexity, and create value at a scale previously unattainable.
In global logistics there is no such thing as a generic shipment. Every customer, every shipment, and every decision carries distinct priorities and expectations, so you can’t build and train AI agents to manage one-size-fits-all cases. When humans and technology operate as partners, that’s when the unlock happens. AI allows our teams to see around corners—assessing impending severe weather, shifting capacity, and network risks in moments—so they can apply their expertise where it matters most: helping customers build resilient supply chains.
Our people help move the goods that move the world. Because of the work we do, consumers can complete everyday tasks—like going to the pharmacy to pick up a prescription—without thinking about whether the shipment arrived on time. Customers trust us to keep shelves stocked, deliver disaster relief, and keep critical operations running.
AI will accelerate global commerce. That’s a fact. But the companies that lead in this transformative moment won’t be the ones with the most sophisticated technology alone. They’ll be the ones that use AI to make human expertise more powerful—those that best combine technology, context, and human expertise to shape outcomes rather than merely react to them. That combination will be a competitive advantage.
From my vantage point, we’re only beginning to unlock the immense value that comes when humans and AI work together as partners. Our early results show this is the winning formula: humans working with AI are delivering outcomes that could not be achieved by either alone. The real promise of AI isn’t artificial intelligence. It’s amplified human potential.
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This story was originally featured on Fortune.com
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