There's Nothing Artificial About It

I've always been a fan of AI but more in the context of Terminator, or "The Second Renaissance", a short story in The Animatrix. (Side note: watch The Animatrix because the collection of short stories provides a rich history of the cybernetic revolt within the Matrix series.)

It wasn't until recently that I started to look at AI for other, more real-world manifestations of it's presence among us. I'm not saying that robots might not one day rise up against mankind, but until that happens there are some fascinating things happening with artificial intelligence.

Because I specialize in SEO and content marketing, I've very interested in how machine learning is being used in the field of marketing. In fact one of the best examples of AI in marketing, one that is being used very successfully, is in the area of content.

All types of websites from e-commerce & blogs, to social networking & media use artificial intelligence to better target recommendations for products or services you'd likely be interested in. It looks at your travels on the internet, and analyzes your activities, interests and opinions and then curate contents that is more likely to align with your interests. Read more from freedough.com about some brilliant examples of AI in action as a marketer.

The thing with AI is that it's still very much new territory, and while it has been very successful at things like diagnosing disease, it still has some growing up to do. It seems that AI is susceptible to peer pressure. In 2016, Microsoft built a Twitter bot, named her Tay and turned her loose. 24 hours later and the bot had learned to be a neo-Nazi. , the bot tweeted messages like “Hitler was right I hate the Jews,” and “I fucking hate feminists and they should all die and burn in hell.”

There's lots of doom and gloom predictions about how AI is going to take over. How it will do a better, more accurate, more efficient job than a human could. Jobs like those in supply chain management, and in marketing. I wonder how a designer would feel if someone said that AI would replace them. Turns out AI is being used to design websites. You can read more about the applications of AI in marketing in this Econsultancy article.

The advancement of AI has happened relatively fast, and in it seems in leaps in bounds. What will the next 5 years look like for AI? One prediction is “By 2018, 20% of all business content will be authored by machines.”, according to Gartner. That's a sobering thought. Maybe a robot revolution is in the future, or maybe a symbiotic relationship develops between humans and AI. One way or the other it's going to exciting.

The photo is by Josh Boot via Unsplash. I chose the image because it made me wonder if in the future will we still be in control?