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The Future of The Workplace with AI

jerry9789
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artificial intelligence, Burning Questions

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Concerns Over AI in The Workplace

Much has been said and concerns have been raised regarding the impact and influence of Artificial Intelligence in the way we do work and conduct business, despite AI’s popularity and appeal reaching mainstream and cultural heights in just the last few years.  Most of these reservations stem from the thought of machines replacing people, as AI is continually applied to automate tasks, optimize efficiency and cut down costs wherever and whenever possible.  But is the workplace of the future looking to be that dire and devoid of human ministration with the ever-increasing utilization of AI? 

The Wall Street Journal did a good job of trying to answer that question by asking several top thinkers on this subject for their point of view.  This article touches on those viewpoints and provides some of our own. 

Many people fear that our growing dependency on AI could lead to indiscriminate and thoughtless applications, which may result in huge and unintended errors, perhaps even to the point of irreparable consequences.  Even well-intentioned initiatives might bear inadvertent effects with one example being the use of digital assistants.  Jonathan Gratch, professor of computer science at the University of Southern California, shares some insights from their research that indicates the weakening of emotional bonds and social checks present in a traditional team setup, or even in typical face-to-face negotiations.  These ethical checks are reduced when AI-based virtual or digital assistants are involved, with interactions becoming more transactional and self-interested. Some people have also been observed instructing AI to channel deception and manipulation in order to gain unfair advantage. 

Deliberate unethical usage is cause enough for alarm and worry as Stuart Madnick, professor of information technologies at the MIT Sloan School of Management, pointed out that AI makes scamming involving the use of personal details much easier and more dangerous. Whereas hackers and scammers were traditionally selective of who they victimize based on the ratio of the money they would be swindling to the effort and time involved to get the scheme going, an AI-driven con could widen the net they cast to include targets of lesser finances and resources they would normally not go after.  In an office environment, this might mean AI-generated emails or phone or video calls with deep fakes that are so convincing an unsuspecting employee might transfer funds upon the instructions of their “boss.” 

Sherry Turkle, author and Abby Rockefeller Mauzé Professor of the Social Studies of Science and Technology at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, also points out the effects of pretend-empathy machines that are now commonly being employed for job interviews and performance assessments.  When the opportunity to be hired or retain one’s job depends on AI judging and scoring us based on qualities it values the most, we might find ourselves training or adjusting “to please the machines.”

Copyright: cottonbro studio

Opportunities at The Workplace with AI

But it’s not all sad and gloom for the workplace of tomorrow with AI.  One can also find opportunities if they’re able to look past all that uncertainty and apprehension.  AI technology is bridging us to the future, but human intelligence can ultimately shape how that bridge is formed. 

Circling back to task automation, this could mean that organizations would eventually have fewer employees and fewer layers of management.  Depending on perspective and needs, this could either be the bane sceptics have been heralding or the boon that would serve as the catalyst for more change.  With routine tasks having been automated, this would open up avenues to explore on what new work you could assign to your employees that a machine simply could not perform.  You might also find some middle-tier work that could be trickled down to lower or greener employees, challenging them and helping them grow within your organization.  This could also reduce the need to hire for midcareer posts outside your company which is a likely recourse if an organization is unable to grow their own talents in-house. 

Alberto Rossi, finance professor and director of the AI, Analytics and Future of Work Initiative, at Georgetown University, shared that asset managers are now hiring more human advisers instead of laying them off, a result of offering hybrid advisory services that involve both human input and algorithms.  The advisory service algorithms are assigned certain simple tasks while advisory personnels provide that essential human connection that’s key to client satisfaction and retention. 

With the right data, AI tools and data analytics can transform not only how companies find and recruit talents but also build for the future with team recommendations and identifying organizational gaps.  Guided by human judgment, AI can boost better collaboration and productivity at the workplace.  Generative AI such as ChatGPT has been found likely to improve the productivity of all workers, especially low-skilled workers who appreciate the availability of such tools, helping narrow the productivity gap between this group and their higher-skilled peers. 

An interesting development is the possible rise in value of workers older in age.  The experience and knowledge they gain through the years can be leveraged to identify which issues need the most attention and immediate or timely resolution along with validating AI-based solutions and recommendations.  Investing in further training and upskilling can also lead the way to improved AI utilization and collaboration; just as AI makes automated customer interaction feel much more natural, AI services can decrease complexity with coaching and continued education at the workplace with conversational interfaces and natural-language processing.  This reduction in complexity can also extend to AI-powered “concierge” systems when assisting employees seeking benefits and services from their employer. 

Ultimately, these exercises in the utilization and collaboration with AI can pave the road for organizational development from task-oriented AI to goal-oriented AI. 

Copyright: Pavel Danilyuk

Transforming The Workplace with AI

As you might have noticed, we’ve painted two different futures for the workplace with AI: one conveying caution and warning, the other promoting potential and exploration.  One of the key differences that separate both realities is the thoughtful and ethical application of AI.  At Cascade Strategies, we’ve always advocated for the “Appropriate Use of AI” as we firmly believe that the effective and productive application of AI in shaping the future can only be achieved when tempered with human values and experience.  

The AI boom has driven organizations and businesses to rethink the workplace.  And in the midst of all the automation and optimization that would involve, we are hopeful that there’s always room for high level and inspired human thinking, the kind that unlocks genuine breakthroughs and achieves true excellence. 

Copyright: Kindel Media

Featured Image Copyright: beasternchen

Top Image Copyright: Anna Shvets

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So Why Use AI For Your Small Business?

jerry9789
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artificial intelligence, Brand Surveys and Testing, Burning Questions

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Artificial Intelligence has actually been around for decades already but it grew past being a buzzword and into the mainstream in 2022 with the surprise popularity of OpenAI’s ChatGPT.  Nowadays, it might be challenging to find someone who doesn’t have an iota of an idea of what AI is and what it does.  In fact, its widespread cultural adoption belies its real impact behind the scenes where it steadily transforms and shapes businesses and industries towards a more automated and optimized direction.

Now as a small business owner, you might think that last statement doesn’t apply to you and is targeted mostly towards larger scale companies, but that is far from the truth.  That last statement is just as relevant to your smaller, local-based trade as it is to any regional or global firm.  In fact, 75% of small businesses have taken advantage of AI, according to the Small Business & Entrepreneurship Council.  Additionally, 93% of small businesses agree that they save money and improve profitability utilizing AI solutions.  We learned about these two interesting points when we attended a webinar hosted by CallRail, “Q&A: Demystifying AI for Small Businesses.”

You might have heard too that AI actually places everybody on the same playing field, and this was underscored at the webinar when they shared that small businesses have access to the same AI technology that big companies employ.  At the same time, small businesses are granted a chance to achieve the same impact as their larger counterparts.  Small businesses however enjoy being able to adapt or incorporate new technology and processes easier than their larger counterparts.

So how do you join the small businesses using AI to make money and grow?  What are examples of AI being utilized by small businesses?  Where do you start in understanding and applying AI solutions for your small business?

Copyright: Shafin_Protic

Artificial Intelligence and Its Subsets

Perhaps it’s best to follow suit with the webinar and include a quick look but fundamental understanding of AI and its subset.  As you might know, AI technology enables machines like computer systems to simulate or emulate human intelligence and behavior by learning from training data, pattern recognition, decision-making, and problem-solving.

When that pattern recognition is taken one step further by involving huge data sets and advanced algorithms, a subset of AI called Machine Learning is developed.  Aside from simulating or emulating human intelligence, Machine Learning allows computer systems to learn and adapt.  However, a misstep in ML is the oversight of certain variables affecting the accuracy of the intended output.

A subset of ML called Deep Learning builds upon this limitation of overlooking variables by actually learning from these variables with historical data to generate accurate and high level outputs.  DL achieves this by leveraging multiple layers of artificial neural networks for in-depth data processing and analytical tasks.

And when that high level data set is transformed into generated yet fine-tuned content like text, images, or code, we now arrive in the territory of Generative AI.  This subset of DL models include the popular ChatGPT.

Copyright: geralt

How Are Small Businesses Using AI?

Like any other company or industry, small businesses have started to use AI to save time by streamlining, automating and optimizing whichever aspect of their processes that they could.  One example is speech-to-text where instead of listening to every call, you convert a recorded phone call into summarized text with relevant and possibly actionable information or insight.  By filtering calls in this manner, you’re also able to identify which types require the utmost attention and immediate follow-up, an especially valuable feature for qualifying leads.

As they say time is gold and so in the same vein where you free time by outsourcing time-consuming and repeatable tasks to another person or agency, automating processes through AI allow you to devote the time you free up to other more advanced functions or find more opportunities that can help further improve productivity and profitability, growing your business along the way.

Copyright: sohag_hawlader

Will AI Replace Small Businesses?

Now adapting and utilizing AI in your small business isn’t the end-all and be-all; it won’t even be replacing you wholesale anytime since it is, after all, just another tool at one’s disposal.  Embracing the hot new tech keeps you at pace with the rest of the pack, but how you stand out will still fall on your business savvy and the intrinsic, unique value you bring to the table.  Whether it be for your marketing or improving processes or customer relations, AI will help you glean as many insights as possible from your business transactions, interactions, and communications, but how effective that knowledge becomes will still depend on how well you leverage it.

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What It Means to Choose or Decide In The Age of AI

jerry9789
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artificial intelligence, Burning Questions

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Longstanding Concerns Over AI

From an open letter endorsed by tech leaders like Elon Musk and Steve Wozniak which proposed a six-month pause on AI development to Henry Kissinger co-writing a book on the pitfalls of unchecked, self-learning machines, it may come as no surprise that AI’s mainstream rise comes with its own share of caution and warnings. But these worries didn’t pop up with the sudden popularity of AI apps like ChatGPT; rather, concerns over AI’s influence have existed decades long before, expressed even by one of its early researchers, Joseph Weizenbaum.

 

ELIZA

In his book Computer Power and Human Reason: From Judgment to Calculation (1976), Weizenbaum recounted how he gradually transitioned from exalting the advancement of computer technology to a cautionary, philosophical outlook on machines imitating human behavior. As encapsulated in a 1996 review of his book by Amy Stout, Weizenbaum created a natural-language processing system he called ELIZA which is capable of conversing in a human-like fashion. When ELIZA began to be considered by psychiatrists for human therapy and his own secretary interacted with it too personally for Weizenbaum’s comfort, it led him to start pondering philosophically on what would be lost when aspects of humanity are compromised for production and efficiency.

Copyright chenspec (Pixabay)

 

The Importance of Human Intelligence

Weizenbaum posits that human intelligence can’t be simply measured nor can it be restricted by rationality. Human intelligence isn’t just scientific as it is also artistic and creative. He remarked with the following on what a monopoly of scientific approach would stand for, “We can count, but we are rapidly forgetting how to say what is worth counting and why.” 

Weizenbaum’s ambivalence towards computer technology is further supported by the distinction he made between deciding and choosing; a computer can make decisions based on its calculation and programming but it can not ultimately choose since that requires judgment which is capable of factoring in emotions, values, and experience. Choice fundamentally is a human quality. Thus, we shouldn’t leave the most important decisions to be made for us by machines but rather, resolve matters from a perspective of choice and human understanding.

 

AI and Human Intelligence in Market Research

In the field of market research, AI is being utilized to analyze a multitude of data to produce accurate and actionable results or insights.  One such example is deep learning models which, as Health IT Analytics explains, filter data through a cascade of multiple layers.  Each successive layer improves its result by using or “learning” from the output of the previous one.  This means the more data deep learning models process, the more accurate the results they provide thanks to the continuing refinement of their ability to correlate and connect information.

 

While you can depend on the accuracy of AI-generated results, Cascade Strategies takes it one step further by applying a high level of human thinking.  This allows Cascade Strategies to interpret and unravel insights a machine would’ve otherwise missed because it can only decide, not choose.

Take a look at the market research project we performed for HP to help create a new marketing campaign.  As part of our efforts, we chose to employ very perceptive researchers to spend time with worldwide HP engineers as well as engineers from other companies.

 

This resulted in our researchers discovering that HP engineers showed greater qualities of “mentorship” than other engineers.  Yes, conducting their own technical work was important but just as significant for them was the opportunity to impart to others, especially younger people, what they were doing and why what they were doing was important.  This deeper level of understanding led the way for a different approach to expressing the meaning of the HP brand for people and ultimately resulted in the award-winning and profitable “Mentor” campaign.

 

If you’re tired of the hype about AI-generated market research results and would like more thoughtful and original solutions for your brand, choose the high level of intuitive, interpretive, and synthesis-building thinking Cascade Strategies brings to the table.  Please visit https://cascadestrategies.com/ to learn more about Cascade Strategies and more examples of our better thinking for clients.

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The Emerging Consensus On AI

jerry9789
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artificial intelligence, Burning Questions

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The Future Is Here

“Mitigating the risk of extinction from AI should be a global priority alongside other societal-scale risks such as pandemics and nuclear war.”

 

With just 22 words, we are ushered into a future once heralded in science fiction movies and literature of the past, a future our collective consciousness anticipated but has now taken us by surprise upon the realization of our unreadiness.  It is a future where machines are intelligent enough to replicate a growing number of significant and specialized tasks.   A future where machines are intelligent enough to not only threaten to replace the human workforce but humanity itself.

 

Published by the San Francisco-based Center for AI Safety, this 22-word statement was co-signed by leading tech figures such as Google DeepMind CEO Demis Hassabis and OpenAI CEO Sam Altman.  Both have also expressed calls for caution before, joining the ranks of other tech specialists and executives like Elon Musk and Steve Wozniak.

 

Earlier in the year, Musk, Wozniak, and other tech leaders and experts endorsed an open letter proposing a six-month halt on AI research and development.  The suggested pause is presumed to allow for time to determine and implement AI safety standards and protocols.

 

Max Tegmark, physicist and AI researcher at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and co-founder of the Future of Life Institute, once held an optimistic view of the possibilities granted by AI but has now recently issued a warning.  He remarked that humanity is failing this new technology’s challenge by rushing into the development and release of AI systems that aren’t fully understood or completely regulated.

 

Henry Kissinger himself co-wrote a book on the topic.  In The Age of AI, Kissinger warned us about AI eventually becoming capable of making conclusions and decisions no human is able to consider or understand.  This is a notion made more unsettling when taken into the context of everyday life and warfare.

 

Working With AI

We at Cascade Strategies wholeheartedly agree with this now emerging consensus and additionally, we believe that we’ve been obedient in upholding the responsible and conscientious use of AI.  Not only have we long been advocating for the “Appropriate Use” of AI, but we’ve also made it a hallmark of how we find solutions for our client’s needs with market research and brand management.

 

Just consider the work we’ve done with the Expedia Group.   For years, they’ve utilized a segmentation model to engage with their lodging partners by offering advice that could lead to the partner winning a booking over a competitor.  AI filters through the thousands of possible recommendations to arrive at a shortlist of the best selections optimized for revenue.

 

With the continued growth and diversification of their partners, they then needed a more effective approach in engaging and appealing to them, something that focuses more on that associate’s behavior and motivations.  We came up with two things for Expedia: a psychographic segmentation formed into subgroups based on patterns of thinking, feeling, and perceiving to explain and predict behavior, and more importantly, a Scenario Analyzer that utilizes the underlying AI model but now delivers recommendations in very action-oriented and compelling messaging tailor-fit for that specific partner.

 

The best part about the Scenario Analyzer is whether the partner follows any of the advice recommended or does nothing, Expedia still stands to make a profit while maintaining an image of personalized attentiveness to their partner’s needs.  And ultimately, it’s the partner who gets to decide, not the AI.

Copyright Tara Winstead

 

Our Future With AI

This is how we view and approach AI- it’s not the end-all, be-all solution but rather an essential tool in increasing productivity and efficiency in tandem with excellent human thinking, judgment, and creativity.  Yes, it is going to be part of our future but in line with the new consensus, we believe that AI shaped by human values and experience is the way to go with this emerging and exciting technology.

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Kissinger’s Warning on AI

jerry9789
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artificial intelligence, Burning Questions

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The Impact of AI

In The Age of AI, which Henry Kissinger co-wrote with Eric Schmidt and Daniel Huttenlocher, Kissinger tried to warn us that AI would eventually have the capability to come up with conclusions or decisions that no human is able to consider or understand.  Put another way, self-learning AI would become capable of making decisions beyond what humans programmed into it and base such conclusions on what it deems the most logical approach, regardless of how negative or devastating the consequences can be.

 

A common example to illustrate this point is how AI had already transformed games of strategy like chess, where given the chance to learn the game for itself instead of using plays programmed into it by the best human chess masters, it executed moves that have never crossed the human mind.  And when playing with other computers that were limited by human-based strategies, the self-learning AI proved dominant.

 

When applied to the field of warfare, this could possibly mean AI proposing or even executing the most inhumane of plans regardless of human disagreement simply because it considers such a decision the most logical step to take.

 

The Influence of AI

As part of Kissinger’s warning, it’s been noted just how far-reaching AI’s influence already is in modern life, especially with its usage in innocuous things such as social media algorithms, grammar checkers, and the much-hyped ChatGPT.  With the growing dependency on AI, there runs the risk of human thinking being eclipsed by machine-based efficiency and effectiveness.  And how it arrives at such efficient and effective decisions becomes questionable because it could become difficult or near impossible to trace what it has learned along the way.

 

Just imagine someone making a decision influenced by the information fed to them by AI and yet failing to rationalize the thinking behind such a decision.  That particular human may not realize it, but at that point they’re living in an AI world, where human decision-making is imitating machine decision-making rather than the reverse.  It was this interchangeability Alan Turing was referring to with his famous postulate about artificial intelligence — the so-called “Turing Test” — which holds that you haven’t reached anything that can be fairly called AI until you can’t tell the difference.

Copyright Pavel Danilyuk

 

Appropriate Use of AI

However, it’s been pointed out that the book doesn’t follow “AI fatalism,”  a common belief wherein AI is inevitable and humans are powerless to affect this inevitability.  The authors wrote that we are still capable of controlling and shaping AI with our human values, its “appropriate use” as we at Cascade Strategies have been advocating for quite some time. We have the opportunity to limit or restrain what AI learns or align its decision-making with human values.

 

Kissinger had sounded the warning while others had already made calls to start limiting AI’s capabilities.  We are hopeful that in the coming years, with the best modern thinkers and tech experts at the forefront, we progress to more of an AI-assisted world where human agency remains paramount instead of an AI-dominated world where inscrutable decisions are left up to the machines.

 

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What To Make Of ChatGPT’s User Growth Decline

jerry9789
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artificial intelligence, Burning Questions, Uncategorized

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The Beginning Of The End?

More than six months after launching on November 2022, ChatGPT recorded its first decline in user growth and traffic in June 2023.  Spiceworks reported that the Washington Post surmised quality issues and summer breaks from schools could have been factors in the decline, aside from multiple companies banning employees from using ChatGPT professionally.

Brad Rudisail, another Spiceworks writer, opined that a subset of curious visitors driven by the hype over ChatGPT could’ve also boosted the numbers of early visits, the dwindling user growth resulting from the said group moving on to the next talk of the town.

The same article also brings up open-source AI gaining ground on OpenAI’s territory as a possible factor, thanks to customizable, faster, and more useful models on top of being more transparent and the decreased likelihood of cognitive biases.

Don’t Buy Into The Hype

But perhaps the best takeaway is Mr. Rudisail’s point that we’re still in the early stages of AI and it’s premature to herald ChatGPT’s downfall with a weak signal like decreased user growth.  For all we know, this is what could be considered normal numbers, with earlier figures inflated by the excitement surrounding its launch.  Don’t buy into the hype is a position we at Cascade Strategies advocate when it comes to matters of AI.

 

The advent of AI has taken productivity and efficiency to levels never seen before, so the initial hoopla over it is understandable.  However, we believe people are now starting to become a little more settled in their appraisal of AI.  They’re starting to see that AI is pretty good at “middle functions” requiring intelligence, whether that be human or machine-based.  But when it comes to “higher function” tasks which involve discernment, abstraction and creativity, AI output falls short of excellence.  Sometimes mediocrity is acceptable, but for most pursuits excellence is needed.

 

Excellence Achieved Through High Level Human Thinking

To illustrate just how AI would come out lacking in certain activities, let’s consider our case study for the Gargoyles brand of sunglasses.  ChatGPT can produce a large number of ads for sunglasses at little or no cost, but most of those ads won’t bring anything new to the table or resonate with the audience.

However, when researchers spent time with the most loyal customers of Gargoyles to come up with a new ad, they discovered a commonality that AI simply did not have the power to discern.  They found a unique quality of indomitability among these brand loyalists: many of them had been struck down somewhere in their upward striving, and they found the strength and resolve to keep going while the odds were clearly against them.  They kept going and prevailed.  The researchers were tireless in their pursuit of this rare trait, and they stretched the interpretive, intuitive, and synthesis-building capacities of their right brains to find it.  Stretching further, they inspired creative teams to produce the award-winning “storyline of life” campaign for the Gargoyles brand.

All told, this is a story of seeking excellence, where hard-working humans press the ordinary capacities of their intellects to higher layers of understanding of a subject matter, not settling for simply a summarization of the aggregate human experience on the topic.  This is what excellence is all about, and AI is not prepared to do it.  To achieve it, humans have to have a strong desire to go beyond the mediocre.  They have to believe that stretching their brains to this level results in something good.

 

How To Make “Appropriate Use” of AI

But that is not to say that AI and high level human thinking can’t mix.  The key is to recognize where AI would best fit in your process and methodologies, then decide where human intervention comes in.  This is what we call “Appropriate Use” of AI.

 

Take for example our case study for Expedia Group and how they engage with millions of hospitality partners.  Expedia offers their partner “advice” which helps them receive a booking over their competitors.  With thousands of pieces of advice to give their partners, they utilize AI to filter through all those recommendations and present only the best ones to optimize revenue.  Cascade Strategies has helped them further by creating a tool called Scenario Analyzer, which uses the underlying AI model to automate the selection of these most revenue-optimal pieces of advice.

 

Either way, the end decision on which advice to go with (or whether they accept any advice at all) ultimately still comes from Expedia’s partner, not the AI.

Copyright ClaudeAI.uk

 

A Double-edged Sword

As you can see with ChatGPT, it’s easy to get carried away with all the hype surrounding AI.  At launch, it was acclaimed for the exciting possibilities it represented, but now that it has hit a bump in the road, some people and outlets act as if ChatGPT is on its last leg.  Hype is good when it’s necessary to draw attention; unfortunately in most cases, it sets up the loftiest of expectations when good sense gets overridden.

 

This is why we think a sensible mindset is the best way to approach and think about AI — to see it for what it really is.  It’s a tool for increasing productivity and efficiency, not the end-all and be-all, as there is still much room for excellent human thinking backed by experience and values to come into play.  Our concerns for now may not be as profound and dire as those expressed by James Cameron, Elon Musk, Steve Wozniak and others, but we’d like to believe that “appropriate use” of AI is the key towards better understanding and responsible stewardship of this emerging new technology.

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How Great Research Produces Great Campaigns

jerry9789
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artificial intelligence, Brand Surveys and Testing, Brandview World, Burning Questions

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Can AI Produce Your Marketing Campaign?

If you were given the task of developing a global communications campaign for a technical products company, would you let ChatGPT do it?

You might, especially if you noted that ChatGPT could churn out dozens of ads like the one above without paying art directors, copywriters, media professionals, or users of a Demand Side Platform.

But we wouldn’t.  This is because it’s hard for AI to produce at the level of excellence, and excellence is what should be sought.

 

Seeking Excellence in Marketing Campaigns

The ad below is part of an award-winning and profitable “Mentor” campaign for HP.  To arrive at this level, HP had to commission very perceptive researchers to spend time with worldwide HP engineers as well as engineers from other companies.

The researchers stretched the intuitive, interpretive, and synthesis-building capacities of their right brains to arrive at a subtle insight that AI would have great difficulty seeing: that HP engineers showed greater qualities of “mentorship” than other engineers.  They thought it was important not only to conduct their own technical work, but to impart to others (typically younger people) what they were doing and why what they were doing was important.

It would be very hard indeed to stretch an AI chatbot (or other AI engine) to that deeper level of understanding about what a truly extraordinary ad should do to express the true meaning of a brand to people.

 

An example from the world of sunglasses

If you were given the job of developing a campaign for a  line of sunglasses, you could probably get ChatGPT to produce a large number of ads like the following at little or no cost (with the exception of the cost of the talent).

But AI-produced ads fall short of excellence.  AI simply cannot do the incisive interpretive work that humans can do to produce something better.

Researchers working for the Gargoyles brand of sunglasses spent time with those who preferred this brand and made a discovery about them that AI engines would have great difficulty seeing: that many Gargoyles wearers were upward strivers who were at first destined to fail, then turned things around with drive, verve, and strenuous effort.

They had a “storyline of life” worth admiring.  To gain this insight, the researchers had to stretch the intuitive and interpretive powers of their brains.  They could not simply rely on a summarization of prior human experience in producing ads about sunglasses.

 

Higher powers AI cannot reach

AI cannot stretch to this level of excellence.  It cannot see broader levels of human experience that may be required to produce excellence, such as “how could sunglasses have anything to do with striving?” or “how could a life story of struggling ever be associated with sunglasses?”  Hell, generative AI wouldn’t even think to inquire about a storyline of life.  But humans can do that when their right brains are performing at a very high level.

The researchers in this case had to sweat the details a little more, spend quality time pondering the higher thematic levels, and drive their brains well beyond summarization to a more sublime expression of the true meaning of a brand to people.

This is the kind of work Cascade Strategies does on a daily basis.  Please have a look at some other examples of higher thinking for clients at https://cascadestrategies.com.

 

People are catching on and speaking out

More people are seeing the chasm between the summarization of human experience that AI can provide and the excellence provided by the greater intuitive powers of the human brain, and they are speaking out about it.  One example is Po-Shen Loh, a charismatic math coach who directly confronts AI, challenging his students to attack complex math problems at higher levels of understanding and interpretation than AI could ever provide.

But there are even more people who are discovering this excellence gap, and their voices will grow stronger.

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to Cascade Strategies

A highly innovative, award-winning market research and consulting firm with over 31 years’ experience in the field. Cascade provides consistent excellence in not only the traditional methodologies such as mobile surveys and focus groups, but also in cutting-edge disciplines like Predictive Analytics, Deep Learning, Neuroscience, Biometrics, Eye Tracking, Virtual Reality, and Gamification.
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