Cyborg Age Marketing: Will A.I. truly be the end of Marketing as we know it?

A.I. (Artificial Intelligence or AI) is fundamentally changing how friendly robots help human jobs, and in general makes our lives better. Or at least, that is what its supporters claim. Other people are increasingly afraid of AI, even if they don’t really know how to define it. Their fear: AI augmented robots will eventually rule us.

Is there really a Robocalypse upon us? Are we at risk to turn into cyborgs ourselves? If and when we do, what happens to society and business as we know it, including “Marketing as we know it”?

Acute Robophobia

Sergio Zyman was the CMO at The Coca-Cola Company when I joined it in 1995. In 1999, 20 years ago, he wrote a marketing book with the provocative title The End of Marketing as We Know It. AI did not feature big in his otherwise very forward thinking. However, with AI on the rise, his book title may prove prescient. Some even predict AI will mean The End of Marketing. Not as we know it, but full stop.

Ray Kurzweil is an inventor and futurist, the co-founder of Singularity University, and Google’s current pope of engineering. He has a rather incredible 86% track record on correct bold predictions. In 2005 he suggested that The Singularity is Near. Singularity is the point where artificial intelligence passes human intelligence. Kurzweil argues that the line where humans stop and cyborgs start will blur fast. Eventually, he predicted, it may/will upend many paradigms we hold dear today in life, in business, and by extension, in anything marketing related (finance, branding and advertising,…).

If Ray is right again, marketers better listen up. Classic finance is already being challenged and reinvented by fintech and techfin. Graphene may increase the speed of the next level internet by 100x. AI is clearly on the rise all around us. As always, just follow the money: in business, investors value companies that are able to leverage AI in their existing models, or reinvent themselves completely on its basis.

Since 2010, investment in anything with an algorithm is booming. Valuations for businesses built on the magic buzzwords cloud, AI, machine learning, deep learning and IOT are skyrocketing. Ideally the scale up can show it does all at the same time, as they are related anyway. The promise for AI is becoming a new must to explore for any company.

As technology progresses, it is indeed not inconceivable for our own brains and body to be AI augmented one day. If and when we would become Cyborgs, it surfaces a whole new set of questions of how societies will operate. How life will happen. How business will be done. How marketing and branding will be done, if it still exists at all? When we become some form of cyborgs, even the longtime immutable fundamentals of marketing may finally shift. All marketing and advertising rules may have to be rewritten completely when that happens, if there is still a need for it at all.

The Dawn of AI

Like other key concepts in marketing, finance and space, the term Artificial Intelligence is older than many think. It was coined back in 1956 by John McCarthy, an American computer scientist. Some data scientists claim the idea of AI goes back even further, to 1914. They attribute it to the Spanish equivalent of Thomas Edison: Leonardo Torres y Quevedo (1852-1936). AI is also often mixed up with terms like Machine Learning (ML) and Deep Learning (DL), as well as with Internet of Things (IOT) and Big Data (BD). There are many great sites that perfectly explain their interaction, but the essence of it is this: 1) ML and DL are technical analytical subparts of the broader AI concept, 2) thanks to the many new sensors deployed by IOT, AI has the BD to test, train and (self)-optimize its underlying algorithms to become smarter. Got it?

AI’s first real global watershed moment was when IBM’s Deep Blue chess supercomputer beat reigning human chess world champion Gary Kasparov on February 10, 1996. From there, many other events happened. Machines started to outsmart or outperform humans, up to until the self-driving cars of today. Kasparov was infuriated at the time, but changed his mind upon the arrival of an even better chess player: DeepMind’s AlphaZero. This machine played itself and other machines, and taught itself. It obtained a stunning chess ELO score of 3600. The best players at that time did not pass 2900. IBM’s Deep Blue scored only 2700. Kasparov admitted his Deep Blue match had to be the dawn of AI. He would go on to say AI can elevate and augment human intelligence. The pro AI camp will argue machines can unlock unexplored opportunities and our full creativity. Others see AI to be the end of creativity. Who will be right? 

Good Robot. Bad Robot. 

The market for humanoid robots is expected to grow an exponential 10x by 2023, from US$ 320.3 million to $3.9 billion, according to research company ReportsnReports. Industrial robotics may account for US$ 72 Bn by that date. We are fast moving beyond simple robots. In past centuries, science fiction writers like Jules Verne and Isaac Asimov made us enter new and very uncomfortable worlds. In the last years, suspenseful techno paranoia Netflix TV shows like Altered Carbon or Black Mirror tap into our collective unease with how technology has, and will, transform all aspects of life, starting with our jobs.

What worries people on Main Street is their jobs and their life as they know it. Over the last 100+ years, increased robotization created many traumas for people. Robots, machines and automation replaced a lot of manual labor. The new fear is that AI will do the same to pretty much everybody else, including so called knowledge workers (including marketers). Only the jobs of a few highly specialized people may survive. Parents worry about their kids' future all the time. What essential life skills will ensure the highest likelihood to be AI-proof ? What will my kid be able to do a robot cannot? Where and how do my kids learn these ?

Not only are we expecting to live longer, maybe even to 150, but if part of our old (marketing) jobs are taking over by robots, what are we going to do with ourselves? That is the existential question pondered by writers like Yuval Noah Harari. Having solved many issues on the planet, his thesis is that humankind risks entering an equally unprecedented age of boredom. It will have to look for new issues to solve in order to stay happy. If happiness is essentially linked to human biochemical reactions, we need to continuously find new natural equilibriums between stress/excitement and calm/tranquility. So jobs matter, but the biggest worry is going well beyond jobs. The single biggest concern is becoming more existential in nature. Humankind fears we are about to lose control over life itself.

Pop culture is always a good source to get insight in how societies deal with complex new developments like, in this case, androids, cyborgs, and with sentient life forms. Below is a quick time-lapse of a selection of popular movies and books describing this evolution. In the book list, I split fiction from non fiction. Take your time to study the titles. They say a lot about the evolution of the Zeitgeist. As we learn more, humankind gets hungrier and hungrier to unlock the true potential of mastering our future, the algorithm of life. Before somebody else does. But the anxiety is increasing too.

Andrew Murray is a professor of Law at London School of Economics, specializing in media and technology. He, and many with him, are pondering the very deep questions about our identity and what it means to be human in times of human-level artificial intelligence. What will be our relationship with sentient life forms different than our own? Interestingly, as marketers, valuing empathy, let's take the robot's perspective. They may develop their own point of view over time...

Humans are inscrutable. Infinitely unpredictable. This is what makes them dangerous. (Robocalypse)

Fans of the Blade Runner movies will know the faith of replicants. Especially when, against all expectations, even replicants find ways to procreate. Most of these movies and books are dystopian, even though many have a silver lining. People love the existential questions they raise, but still prefer happy ends. However, it is not clear what the end will look like.

The Cyborg Age is Near

  We may soon need to ask how we will live with humanized robots. Going one step further though: what happens if we gradually (can) become cyborgs ourselves? As technology progresses, it is absolutely not inconceivable for our own brains and body to be AI augmented one day. If and when when we do, it surfaces a whole new set of questions of how societies will operate, and how business will be done. 

There is an old saying: the soup is never eaten as hot as it is served. Perceptions may be stronger than the reality. In this brief article, my goal was to make a first assessment of how hot the AI soup really is. It seems quite hot and spicy indeed, and Elon Musk for one does not like it all. He sees AI as one more reason humankind needs to think beyond Earth. He wants us to become a spacefaring species - for our own survival. Bill Gates seems to agree with him. Jeff Bezos does not. He wants the world to positively embrace AI. Many agree with Jeff. Game on. On AI’s impact, we seem to be back to a Mars versus Venus fight. The smartest people on this planet seem to have the most vastly different perspectives on the same subject. As always, probably both sides will be right and wrong. We will all have to learn to drink the proverbial AI soup, and empty the cup to the bottom in some shape or form.

My conclusion so far: the real AI moment of truth is still waiting to happen, more than 75 years later after McCarthy’s creation. It will likely manifest itself in a stealth way, gradually, glacially, as a critical part of the ongoing Space Race 2.0, the second cycle of space investment. Equally, we will gradually adjust many components of the marketing toolbox. Our mobile phones are already de facto glued to our bodies. Nomophobia already turns us into a de facto primitive form of cyborg.

But if and when we become a truly advanced form of cyborg, even the longtime immutable fundamentals of marketing may finally shift. If we chose to augment our human brains somehow, with an ability to instantly access all possible factors for choice, how would brands be built and chosen? If we become, if we finally are the algorithm, is the idea of choice still relevant at that time? How would humankind still enjoy emotions if we are all too rational and too smart? Will some be augmented more than others - amplifying today's inequalities ? Marketing may have to be rewritten completely when that happens, if there is still a need for it at all.

In Game of Thrones, winter was a long time coming. But humankind rallied for survival, and prevailed. When the Cyborg Age really comes, it could really be The End of Marketing as We Know It. Unless we rally again.