AI promises to shake up our working lives on a scale not seen since broadband became a mass market concern. However, the rapid shift to greater automation has the potential to be more disruptive. While machine learning certainly isn’t new in sectors such as digital marketing, there’s no doubt those working in data-heavy categories will be impacted hardest and within a shorter time-frame than others.
Yes we are currently near the peak of the hype cycle, but it’s still important to acknowledge the all-too tangible concerns that people have about the potential impacts of AI on their careers and livelihoods. In fact, 71% of marketers believe that AI has the capability to outperform humans at their job.
We’ve reached a critical point at which AI is being successfully productized to the extent that the likes of ChatGPT and DALL-E have entered mainstream discourse. The developers reassure us that these tools will make our lives easier, but therein lies the concern… What we do day-to-day historically hasn’t been easy and doing digital marketing well takes significant experience and specialist training. Some might worry that all the efforts they’ve put into developing their careers will come to nothing – after all, why shouldn’t we just run a query or a code through ChatGPT?
We know it’s not that simple – but the question is, do our clients, or indeed our bosses? How do we take advantage of AI tools – which undoubtedly we should if we want to protect our jobs long-term- and still justify our salaries?
Believe the Hype… to a Point
I’m sure we’d all appreciate a helping hand in tackling the mundane yet time-consuming tasks that linger at the bottom of our to-do lists, such as reporting, trend analysis, presentations and content personalization strategies. And the good news is that AI excels at driving efficiencies. By delegating data crunching and administrative tasks to an AI program, there’s no doubt your time is freed up to focus on other crucial – and potentially more interesting – aspects of your role, such as strategy and people management.
However, we need to remain cautious. AI applications are still very much tools rather than solutions unto themselves. They can be employed as a starting point to help enhance our creativity and problem solving abilities, but our work will be poorer for it, if we expect AI to do the thinking for us.
Content creation is a good example of the limitations. AI is literally the sum of its parts, so if everyone relies on it for copy and idea generation, there’s a genuine danger that everything will start to look and feel the same. We’ve seen how this translates into ever-decreasing circles of ‘sameness’ in the cautionary tale of digital artist Greg Rutkowski, whose signature style is now less unique given generative AI users’ fondness for dragon illustrations.
Yet by combining the speed of AI with the ingenuity of human thought, we can strike a balance that ensures diversity and avoids monotony.
Being Human
When it comes to my sector, digital marketing, AI can optimize bid strategies by swiftly analyzing vast sets of data and identifying patterns – in fact it’s been doing so for some time. However, we must consider the fact that algorithms struggle to account for the complexities of the human factor.
For instance, we know algorithms may overlook contextual nuances and inadvertently reflect the biases of their developers. To avoid this, we must proceed with caution and combine AI’s capabilities with our own judgement and balance what the data tells us with something the AI will never be able to do, our lived experience. The human touch provides a necessary element of empathy and intuition that algorithms cannot – and perhaps never will – replicate.
The Best of Both Worlds
It’s simply not feasible to expect to safeguard your career against a technology that you probably don’t fully comprehend, not least because it’s evolving by the day.
But this shouldn’t be a reason not to use it, yet many still don’t. It probably isn’t too surprising that 42% of marketers currently avoid using AI due to a lack of understanding or knowledge.
AI is here to stay and we can’t hope to swim against the tide forever, those best positioned to keep their heads above the water certainly won’t be the Luddites.
Rather, it will be those who keep an open mind to the possibilities and see AI as another tool they can call on within the context of jobs that almost certainly won’t be the same as they are right now.
Most of all, we need to be prepared to keep learning and adapting within the context of this rapidly changing market. When we look back at the fourth industrial revolution, it’s likely that a willingness to embrace change will have been what separates the winners from the losers across all industries.
There’s no doubt AI is a powerful instrument that can expand our capabilities, but it is still as far from perfect as we are. It is prone to hallucinations and the occasional tantrum and we’d be wise to remember this. Let’s never lose sight, for instance, of when Google’s Bard gave an incorrect answer during a promotional video and knocked £1bn off Alphabet Inc’s share price!
So, let’s get beyond our fears that stem from the sensationalist headlines, it was inevitable that in time increased automation would mean job cuts. For each role that becomes redundant, a new one will be created – even if we don’t know what they are yet. After all, AI’s long-term success will be dependent on having people who know what questions to ask and how…
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