IM Reviews

Welcome To IM Reviews

AI: Do Humans Still Hold the Monopoly on Creativity? 9/2

If you were looking for something sexy to steam-up the tech landscape, you got… the Internet of Things (IoT).

Yawn.

It is a game changing concept, to be fair, it just got stuck with a dud of IM Reviews.

2017 is set to fire on all cylinders. Artificial Intelligence (AI) has landed & its got the tech-verse frothing from keyboard to cloud.

Artificial Intelligence – it’s here & it’s takin’ over

Computer science is rapidly catching up to fantasy, and that is pretty darn cool. Not that long ago, we dreamt of machines with human intelligence and beyond. Computers can calculate much faster than people, and without error. Plus, computer memory is highly reliable & potentially unlimited. And, of course, computers can create that perfect playlist for your next barbecue.

But recently, computers failed at certain tasks that humans mastered with ease. For example: recognizing faces or emotions, expressing oneself, and understanding the context of a situation.

Efforts to ‘program’ computers to understand abstract concepts, failed, largely because we do not know ourselves how to identify the rules that govern these actions. So we went maternal on the problem - we gave the computers some instances to work with, and let them figure stuff out on their own, good old-fashioned trial and error. It is true how children master many vital skills, including communication.

Well, those trial & error algorithms are to thank for the current AI revolution. “Deep Learning,” for instance, enables artificial neural networks to recognise recurrent high-level concepts in data by stacking the concepts of lower levels. It will first correlate pixels on a photo, then group them & conceptualize its features (eyes, nose, mouth). Finally, it will group all these concepts to recognize the unique collection of features as a single face. It is thanks to Deep Learning, that FB can recognize you in your photos.

Meanwhile, “Reinforcement Learning” is machine intelligence in a different direction – it teaches machines to perform tasks.

Firstly, the machine is given a goal within an environment & with constraints. The task is grouped by iterations still the machine develops an optimal algorithm to carry out the task. It is the same principal used in self-driving cars & employed by Google to defeat Go’s best player in the world. Google simply bolstered their intelligence with the qualities of the best players in the world, and trained the artificial intelligence against itself to become unbeatable.

Do you want to try your divine hand at creating useful source? “Open AI” offers a platform called “Universe”, which allows you to train your own artificial intelligences, regardless of sector.

Ditch the shackles, AI is getting artistic

With the invasion of chatbots in 2016 & the buzz swirling around CES in 2017, it seems that communication & marketing professionals are finally making AI a priority.

Eventually, all communication professionals can be “augmented” with AI. In fact, it can write novels, short-film scripts, & press articles. In June, The Drum entrusted its publishing reins to “Watson”, IBM’s Artificial Intelligence. Conde Nast chased suit when the publication conglomerate enlisted Watson to join with its target influencers.

Marketers too are taking notice of AI’s vast potential. Tools like Phrasee can anticipate the impact of words and phrases in your “call–to–action”, while Ysance Stories enables marketers to analyze & influence customers as they progress on their purchase journey.

In the same vein, there’re algorithms capable of evaluating emotions through facial expressions and voice tones – good for assessing the impact of communication in time.

AI, a digital you, and the meaning of life…  

Tomorrow is a new day & a new era. Graphic User Interfaces (GUI) will give way to Natural User Interfaces (NUI). The biggest battle in the AI war will rage over the creation of intelligent assistants- much like FB CEO Mark Zuckerberg recently created for his home. 

But you will not have to be a billionaire to afford a digital butler. In fact, we will each have a copy of ourself in the digital world that will replace our smartphone & serve as an intermediary in our interactions. This assistant will manage all our life logistics & lend its expertise to everything from law & business, to finance and medicine.

The prevalence of these intelligent assistants will drive changes in marketing strategies - after all, there is no point influencing clients when their needs will be “intermediated” by trusted intelligent assistants.

Instead, companies will strive to sell their goods & services to the assistants first – convincing them that their products are helpful for the end user.

For their part, assistants must investigate, verify, and compare what companies propose & then make the final purchase decision. Any mistake / dishonesty by the company will cause the artificial intelligence to “de-reference” that company’s marketing, removing their opportunity to sell to the individual.

The advancement of AI means the death of marketing as we know it. But it also means a move towards more transparency & empathy in marketing, to keep clients engaged & moving upstream. If the company proves to the client’s artificial intelligence that it is honest and delivers quality goods and services, then it could maintain a relationship with the AI & therefore, the client. You can find more information.

AIs will gain a consciousness and search for meaning and real commitments from their selections. Think less along the lines of the Terminator movies & more about purchasing beyond the product – a universe with values & ways of being.