Harvey Norman Chairman and major shareholder, believes ‘AI’ has a big future, this is the same executive who claimed the same about 3D TVs and even went as far as funding the broadcast of 3D NRL games not only did the broadcast bomb, but so did 3D TVs with 8K TVs appearing to be heading in the same direction.
Talking to News Corp journalist Harvey said that AI has a huge future but hasn’t happened yet”.
The Australian claims that Harvey knows a trend when he sees one.
He opened his first store in 1961 — not long after vacuuming cleaner magnate Alex Lewyt predicted his appliances would one day become atomic powered.
It later became known as one of the worst business predictions.
Back in November Gerry Harvey was left speechless when his Companies web site crashed for a whole day, it just happened to be Black Friday, the busiest retail day of the year.
“As far as AI is concerned my view is — and theirs (the sales team) is the same — is we talk about AI but what is it and what has happened? Even a robot vacuum cleaner, they say ‘this one’s AI’ but ‘Oh, how?’ right? So that’s the end of artificial intelligence as I see it.”
But Mr Harvey isn’t dismissive of the technology, he just doesn’t believe it has arrived in home appliances yet.
“My view is it’s a big thing for the future. Huge. But it hasn’t happened yet.”
Footnote:3D TVs totally bombed with retailers such as Harvey Norman losing money on the whole concept.
