Artificial Intelligence for Efficiency Sustainability and Inclusivity in TradeTech 2025

The adoption of any new technology creates costs and complexities: staff must be trained, new hardware or software must be acquired, and institutions must adapt to new practices. Despite the upfront challenges, the prospect of AI innovation offers numerous advantages, and today’s businesses risk being left behind if they neglect the prospects of AI adoption.  How should traders navigate AI opportunities? Where can AI implementation yield the greatest gains? An expert survey, mirroring the considerations of customs officials in the WCO Smart Customs Survey (see Figure 2), sheds light on the rate at which AI adoption is likely to proceed for various uses, considering the incentive for change and the ease of implementation. For example, businesses have strong incentives to adopt AI when the efficiency gains are obvious. However, if the technology is challenging to implement – for example, requiring intensive worker reskilling and expensive new hardware – then the advantages would be less obvious. Likewise, if regulatory barriers complicate technological change, the likelihood of adoption plummets.Multiple factors affect both the incentive for and the ease of implementation of AI tools, including the scale of adoption. In general, small-scale adoption tends to be easier to achieve, but gains may be more limited. For example, company-specific solutions, such as dynamic pricing, are generally easier to implement than solutions that require supply chain alignment, such as risk-management techniques. Harder still are the changes that require ecosystem collaboration, such as comprehensive primary data sharing. In the short term, the AI solutions likely to receive the greatest traction are those that offer company- level impacts and defined payoffs. Staged or incremental adoption can support the uptake of AI in more complex fields. However, relying only on local optimization could result in uneven uptake and missed opportunities to support better societal outcomes. Coordination between regulators, industry consortia and neutral platforms could better support AI adoption for greater societal gains by aligning incentives. Several priorities emerge as topics that benefit from coordinated AI approaches. Ease of implementation and level of incentive of AI use in trade TABLE 1 Ease of implementation Low Medium HighLevel of incentive LowIntelligence and negotiations: AI can facilitate both data analysis and more informed negotiation practices. Examples of uses include using AI to process and analyse import and export records, as well as modelling outcomes in multi-party negotiations. MediumContracting and payments: AI can analyse transaction data, contract terms, regulations and thresholds for triggering approvals and payments of smart contracts, greatly reducing the time needed for trade finance to be released.Risk management and resilience: New technologies can improve traders’ mapping of supply chains, analyses of risk horizons and the development of contingency plans. Monitoring severe weather patterns and port congestion, for example, and combining these inputs with fleet-based data can improve traders’ understanding of risks throughout the supply chain. HighTrade optimization: AI can support traders through work streams such as calibrating inventory to better align with demand predictions and monitoring inventories and shipments in real time. Moreover, AI planning to enhance maintenance timing can reduce downtimes, while simulations help prepare contingency plans. Market facilitation: AI’s linguistic capacity and knowledge gathering abilities can support businesses operating in a wide range of contexts by translating communications, adapting advertising and connecting with diverse customers.Ethics and ESG reporting: AI tools can monitor supply chains to track materials and products and assess suppliers to avoid unethical labour, illegal activities and environmental damage to more accurately score risk and comply with ESG requirements. Border clearance: AI tools can help with a range of challenges related to complying with customs and border- crossing protocols, such as managing documentation requirements and scanning X-ray images of cargo for fraud and smuggling detection. Despite the upfront challenges, the prospect of AI innovation offers numerous advantages, and today’s business risk being left behind if they neglect the prospects of AI adoption. 26 Artificial Intelligence for Efficiency, Sustainability and Inclusivity in TradeTech