Digital Commerce to 2036: Platform Existence, Artificial Intelligence and Responsibility for Robots.
The development of digital trade poses questions to businesses and regulators that will affect the continuity of service and the distribution of responsibilities. Three key challenges were presented by X5 Vice President Boris Ogarkov at the platform's Economy Day forum.
1. Work without Internet and equal conditions for online work. The platforms need to proactively determine how to serve customers in the face of loss of connectivity and other external shocks. In addition to technological readiness, we need regulatory scenarios that will allow us to continue working under such conditions. In addition, in the field of regulation, it is important to cancel the different regulation. The current restrictions do not allow X5, as a leader in online product sales, to continue developing its platforms under the same conditions as markets or retail players in other countries.
2. Interact with AI agents. Autonomous systems are becoming participants in digital commerce. The industry will need to learn to distinguish between the actions of a human and an AI agent, as well as assess the consequences of their decisions. According to Ogarkov, no clear rules have yet been formulated in this area either in Russia or in the world.
3. Responsibility for robot actions. The development of unmanned deliveries and other robotic services requires determining who is responsible for incidents involving autonomous devices.
A common question for the industry is how to ensure predictability in the adoption of technologies while maintaining room for their development. Ogarkov called on market participants to jointly seek solutions that would prevent both excessive restrictions and uncontrolled implementation.
For businesses, these questions are directly related to investment planning: scaling new services requires clarity about how they will function in the event of failures and who will be held responsible if the autonomous system makes an error.