The article that I chose is "At More Retailers, Algorithms Are Deciding What’s for Sale" written by Marc Bain and published in Business of Fashion. The article talks about how online retail fashion brands are using machine learning to automate their tasks, such as reorders, to help them minimize their losses.
The article explains that the platform/software works by monitoring the transactions and behavior at the level of individual items across the brand's stores. It uses an algorithm to predict how many units should be reordered, how is the demand for each item, and many other useful data, providing a user-friendly dashboard or converting to spreadsheets if necessary. This software has been helping online retail stores to cut their losses because they are able to order a minimum stock and reorder only if necessary, which also impacts the amount of sales that said online retail store will have.
Technology is penetrating everywhere around the world, even the area that seems furthest away from technologies. Fashion, traditionally business that requires designers' unique style and quick wit, is now leaning more and more on computers. I feel like technology and understanding its mechanism will grow to be ever more important in all fields now. I'm not sure it this will threaten people or free people, but it's clear that the society now needs to accept and be ready for the change.
Abigail's comment: The idea of being able to predict how many units should be reordered seems really cost-effective! It's interesting to see all the different ways prediction algorithms are becoming a part of our daily lives.