AI Isn't Always Right

Artificial Intelligence is an indispensable tool that is fast becoming interwoven into every aspect of business. It's revolutionizing industries, streamlining processes, and enabling companies to deliver consistent results to their customers and audiences. It would be great if having AI do all your work for you was just as simple as putting in a prompt, but it's not.

On August 30th at the HBMA Interactive Strategies Conference, I moderated a panel discussion of the most amazing experts on AI in B2B marketing. I give my thanks to Chris Ferris, PhD, Divya Visentini, Maryna Burushkina, and Erin Moore for participating in the panel and sharing their insights. During the session, I asked our experts how reliable the information you get from AI is. They had some great recommendations!

The Imperfect Art of AI

The undeniable fact is that AI isn't always right. It makes stuff up and is incredibly confident that it's right - when it's not. This happens enough that there is a term for it. It's called a hallucination.

Hallucinations happen when generative AI produces content that is not grounded in reality or does not accurately reflect the source data it has been trained on.

"It sounds like a very smart drunk uncle. He has a couple drinks at Thanksgiving and starts talking like he knows everything. You think, 'wow, my uncle is really smart!' and then it turns out he made everything up." - Chris Ferris, PhD

And who do you not want to share financial, sensitive, proprietary, or confidential information with? Your drunk uncle.

Individuals and companies need to use extreme caution in selecting what information they choose to share with AI. Establishing best practices for your organization, carefully curating prompts, and double checking all generative data will help you keep your content production standards high, and ethical.

Do More With Less, Using AI

In today's world of doing more with less, marketers are expected to churn out more content than ever. From marketing materials and customer support bot responses to research reports and creative pieces, there's so much that has to be produced in a short time. People often rely on AI as a tool to do this, leaving their time free to focus on higher-level tasks and strategy.

It's perfect! Or is it?

The problem arises when organizations allow themselves to be lulled into a false sense of security and rely on an unsustainable production schedule. AI-generated content is not infallible. Without a proper system of checks and balances, companies could create a minefield of misinformation and misunderstanding that not only embarrasses them in time but blazes a trail of inaccuracy that can be hard to stop. The consequences can get serious depending on the industry, nature of the content, and authoritative position of the company.

Keep AI Generated Information Clean

To protect yourself, your team, and your company from AI's drunk uncle, companies must establish and adhere to best practices that work well for them at all levels, and share accessibility of procedures with the entire team.

"Make sure you have a library of your own best practices and save instances where a prompt worked really well. Work as a team and make sure everyone contributes to it. Learn together and share those best practices with each other." - Maryna Burushkina

When you find a prompt that takes only a few steps to make the result perfect, save and share it. Allow the team to add extra lines, delete superfluous information, and create a better version.

The AI tools and platforms selected for the business should also be a result of collaboration among the team. When AI generates content in isolation, it can produce material that is inconsistent from person to person and at odds with the company's brand identity. Avoid confusion by keeping standards applied to AI generated content consistent, and high.

Show Your Work, AI

Common sense tells us (doesn't it?) that you should double check what generative AI gives you before it becomes company content. Instilling quality control mechanisms is just as important to final production as any other step.

But, you can also get AI to help you with that!

"If you give systems a longer prompt, tell it to check its work by asking it to look at the prompt again and understand what it didn't answer. Many times you'll get it going, 'oh, you're right, I'm sorry I missed this, here's a new piece of information.' It's not actually intelligent, it's word prediction that won't always get all the nuances." - Erin Moore

Revisit the original prompt with a proofreading lens. Ask the AI tool to double check itself and reassess its response. Give it a chance to correct its own discrepancies or biases.

Is this just opening yourself up to more misinformation? No, because now you have fewer things to examine and investigate to ensure your disseminated content is fool-proof.

AI Marketing Trends and Strategies for 2024

By 2025, AI will recover?10.9 billion hours of worker productivity.

AI can help you automate tasks, analyze data and streamline work processes.?AI excels at data-driven tasks, processing vast amounts of information efficiently, but it lacks the innate ability to generate novel ideas. It can't deeply understand context or highlight emotional nuances. Those skills are integral to creative and intuitive decision-making.?

HelloKindred just released our new eBook, Marketing Trends and Strategies for 2024. You can download it from our website any time.

Did this article help you understand more about using AI for your B2B marketing business? I’d love your feedback. Please comment and share your thoughts!?