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Calling bullshit on marketers’ perceptions of (most) AI

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By Christian Monberg, Chief Technology Officer

February 13, 2019 | 5 min read

Artificial Intelligence (AI). The word “intelligence” in B2C often summons conversations around business intelligence tools, with the application of artificial intelligence as the most promising path forward. The catch is, AI is no more intelligent than it is a magic bullet.

Calling bullshit on marketers’ perceptions of (most) AI

AI tends to be a parrot. AI systems absorb the data you tell it to look at, is then trained based on your input and expected output, and finally does its best to synthesize a response that’s humanish.

The uncanny valley is real and here’s how we fall into it: AI has been told that a picture of a woman and a man is called “boss with his secretary” as often happens when humans from around the world are involved with tagging data. Suddenly your “intelligence” quickly turns into a misogynist parrot and I don’t know any marketer who is looking for that.

AI isn’t making your business more intelligent. It’s automating and optimizing workflows at scale to free up time so you can be more intelligent.

The moral: AI is great for marketers — but it’s only an incremental step in an intelligent strategy.

Real marketing intelligence

Real intelligence is hard to pin down. Einstein said, "The true sign of intelligence is not knowledge but imagination." Socrates said, "I know that I am intelligent, because I know that I know nothing." Both definitions harken to curiosity, which humans are inherently capable of and algorithms are (mostly) not.

Imagination, curiosity, and humility in our work not only makes work more enjoyable, but it also makes our work more valuable to the constituents that we serve.

The opportunity to inject intelligence into our business exists in two facets. And neither is as simple as adding a dash of AI and walking away. So, what’s a marketer to do?

Create an AI strategy that is inherently curious

Centralize real-time data and retrain your models in (close) to real time. Let a cadre of different algorithms compete for optimal customer value creation at every moment. Encourage serendipity. This computing trust of competing algorithms starts to emulate a curious, Socratic method. It creates a cooperative forum of dialogue between algorithms and users based on asking and answering questions from multiple perspectives. This ultimately draws out new ideas, features, loss functions, objective functions – or user experiences.

Invest in you

The best argument for an investment in AI is that you can spend less time where AI can automate and optimize your workflow, and more time adding intelligence to the organization that pays for your butt to be in a seat eight to 10 hours a day. In short, stop coding emails and pulling spreadsheets. Let AI do it for you. Spend more time investigating the enclaves where your brand and your customers come together. Flex your empathetic and analytical muscles to deploy your curiosity at scale through the tools you have.

The companies that have great AI are likely the companies that create the most value for individual consumers: the map quickly led me to the right location; the diagnosis was accurate; I found the right pair of gold lamé shoes.

In search of creating more value, for more people, look for an AI strategy that can automatically experiment with lots of algorithms, in real-time, given a success criteria. It runs, it decides what is best, it promotes the best tool for the job. The innovation isn’t in the algorithm, it’s in how the algorithms are applied, tested, and promoted on an ongoing basis

The goal of an AI strategy is to create more room and opportunity for your curiosity. Through the 1:1 scale of automation and optimization afforded by AI, you can spend your time trying to better understand your constituents.

Doesn’t that sound better than creating a parrot?

I believe in a world where richer, more human experiences are made possible by artificial intelligence and empathetic design, not one guided by misogynist parrots.

Christian Monberg, chief technology officer, Zeta Global

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