A Q&A with Pete Bremer, Assurant’s VP of Global Automation Engineering
The first time I met Pete Bremer, he was quoting Thanos, the supervillain from the Marvel Universe, and talking about a dry ice cleaning system his team created to return used mobile phones to a like-new shine. And, as crazy as it sounds to say about a process that uses frozen CO2 to remove debris, it was enthralling.
So I was shocked when Pete said he wanted AI and automation to become a mundane part of our overall operations – almost boring in their use case. Recently, I sat down with him to get more context around the use of AI and intelligent automation in Assurant’s device care centers, why it’s boring, and how it’s applied to the processes of repairing, replacing, and refurbishing more than 20M mobile devices every year.
Q: What do you mean when you say you want AI and automation to be boring?
When you think about the best possible applications of AI and automation, you think of manual, monotonous processes that can be improved. Examples of these processes include sorting and opening the thousands of packages shipped to our facilities every day, testing the functionality of used smart tech before refurbishing and reselling it or cleaning more than 20M mobile devices a year. And when you use AI and automation to improve these processes – whether you’re talking about increasing speed to market or driving more customizability – you’re basically creating programs and technology to do boring things faster and better.
