How Spooky is AI?

It’s no secret that A.I has been the talking point of the most advanced and forward thinking companies, but it is also something that has got thought leaders worrying about it. For example, Steve Wozniak says that it could be ‘scary and very bad for people’. So is Artificial Intelligence really that powerful and how will it impact companies at a marketing level?

A.I works by applying algorithms to enormous quantities of data in order to find patterns. Companies can then see patterns and outcomes and ‘think’ in real time about problems. Analytical tasks that would take up an unfathomable amount of man power are moved to a more automated process by, improving complex descriptive, predictive and prescriptive analytical tasks. There are some really interesting use cases of this tech being constantly generated. For example Expertmaker has been using AI to make search and recommendation engines more efficient. Companies like rocketfuel are using AI to help companies programmatically buy advertising online and dramatically cut out misplaced advertising dollars.

Marketers in the digital age are now drowning in the amount of data that is available to them. Anywhere that there is massive amounts of data and smart solutions that need to be found within that data, provides a huge opportunity for the cutting edge of AI to get to work in.

AI in marketing is about creating programmes and systems to solve problems that are beyond the human capacity and delivering CMO’s the amazing results they crave.

The spooky side comes in as these data sets get smarter and smarter, they may start to ‘read your mind’. There is a story about Google in the early days getting search time down from 0.5 of a second to 0.1 of a second. With the question arising when it becomes a point of diminishing returns, the ultimate goal of Google was brought up for them to know what you are thinking before you do. When the boundaries between human and computer merge into one because of this, the waters can start to get murky. Luckily that is not predicted to happen for a while yet, but it is definitely something to keep on your mind.

With the exception of social media and some forms of email marketing, a large majority of marketing is still a one-way channel. Where a message is broadcast with the aim of increasing brand awareness or having a direct response. We will see more of a movement towards the right person being connected to the right solution, at the right time by the right channel of communication. That will be the real power of AI marketing in action.

The good news is that if you have data coming into your company in real time and need to make decisions based on that data fast, then this offers up an opportunity of unprecedented scale. Not only will you be able to save on all the inefficiencies in your business but also the marketing actions that you do apply will have massive leverage that is not currently being attained. This can open up amazing possibilities for your company that you never knew were available before.

It has been said that AI 'the future' is happening right now, for instance can you remember all the numbers in your mobile phone address book?

....Well then you are already outsourcing your cognition to a computer and you should be fine with that, because it works seamlessly. The same is now happening with the data that your company processes, by having it run in an automated system that can scale, there is now no need for manual processing that is prone to error. Getting ahead of the curve is always where the uncapped growth will be.