The Telegraph My details My newsletters Logout Upgrade to Premium My details My newsletters Logout The Telegraph Artificial intelligence the next ‘big bet’ for online retailers, say bosses 8 November 2016 • 2:26pm Artificial intelligence is the key to the future of online retail, business bosses have said, providing a crucial way to help shoppers find what they want.
 Alex Baldock, chief executive of Shop Direct, which runs very.
co.
uk and Littlewoods, told the Telegraph Festival of Business in London that artificial intelligence was the company’s “big bet”.
 “You have three seconds to seize the shopper’s attention - it’s called thumb stopping, the three-second audition,” Mr Baldock said.
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 Both Mr Baldock and Mr Blair affirmed that all their online growth was now coming from mobile: Just Eat, for example, currently takes 80pc of its orders on mobile devices.
 The delivery company also uses chatbots and artificial intelligence for restaurant recommendations, and customers can now order food using an Amazon Echo, a voice command device produced by the US tech giant.
 “When I was a student I would have dreamed of that,” Mr Blair said.
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 He said that automated manufacture was used throughout the company, from creating teabags to steel and cars.
 “Once you can bring in the five digital forces - cloud computing, big data, social media, artificial intelligence, mobile - you can start looking at whole process and virtualise the whole factory, and work out what’s going to happen before it does,” he said.
 Jenny Knott, chief executive of Icap’s Post Trade Risk and Information division, also argued the AI had a role to play in the future of financial services - particularly alongside blockchain, a type of digital ledger that can speed up secure transactions.
 Ms Knott said blockchain was an immutable, “golden version of whatever you are keeping a record of”.
 She tipped big things from “blockchain with a brain” - partnering the technology with artificial intelligence and big data.
 “It’s incredibly empowering in creating transparency,” Ms Knott said.