The A.I. Race: First In, Best Dressed in Business.

Evolving technology has played an incredible role in shaping business over the past 5-10 years, not only from an efficiency perspective but in regards to the wellspring of new services and jobs now available to us. This is especially true in Marketing. Businesses have evolved past print ads, billboards, radio and TV - from simply 'existing' on the web - to now becoming actively engaged with their followers at all times throughout the day. Madison Avenue is a decrepit dinosaur. Your local barber, your favourite cafe and hell, even that teeth whitening product you never knew you needed; it's all just a touch away in this immersive existence.

The future of commerce is going to be unapologetically driven by the first business in each industry to get their hands on true Artificial Intelligence.

Two years ago - and still today in many cases - you would pay an agency $150/hr to manage your Google AdWords campaigns. For 10 hours of qualified, human input each month, you'd be looking at a $1500 bill, plus your ad spend. But that's all changing. I recently met with an agency who does things differently. They leverage scripts to manage their AdWords campaigns for them (which is a fairly new feature); of course, some human interaction is still necessary, but beyond the set-up stage, bots can monitor, adjust and optimise their client's bids 24/7. Twenty-four hours, seven days a week. It's a trend that's starting to take off around the globe: more sophisticated tools = more efficient building. While we may not be living in Marty McFly's future just yet, it does seem to be creeping up, if you know what to look for.

This got me thinking about what the digital landscape will look like in another 10-15 years, especially for marketers and business owners. It also got me thinking about jobs. If programs can, in 2017, optimise my Search campaigns... how long will it be before agencies no longer need dedicated Search Managers? And that's when I realised, this was a race. The future of commerce is going to be unapologetically driven by the first business in each industry to get their hands on true Artificial Intelligence, and here's the thing... it has already begun.

Meet IBM's "Watson". At the moment, it's available as a set of APIs and SaaS products, but for all intents and purposes, it's A.I. Able to understand, learn, reason and interact, its primary functionality at the moment seems to be as an intelligent Chat Bot. I currently use a strain of Watson in my business to synchronise written slides to my voice, allowing me to put together VSLs at lightning speed. It's not incredibly exciting, but does it save me time? Yes. And time is money.

Interestingly, the growing epidemic of entrepreneurial ventures over the past 5 years has very much coincided with this current, golden era of social media. So what does the future look like when A.I. take our day jobs? I don't know. But what I do know is, I'd rather be a business owner than an employee when I find out.