The AI revolution – part 2

My first article provided an overview of what Artificial Intelligence (AI) is and how it is transforming business, marketing and how we live. To recap, AI is based on creating machines that can think like humans. We are seeing many new developments in AI at an alarming fast pace and with greater efficiency.

The hot topic of AI recently sparked a public dispute between Tech titans Elon Musk and Mark Zuckerberg. Musk remarked that the Facebook CEO, Zuckerberg, has “limited” knowledge of the AI field. Musk, the Tesla and SpaceX CEO, has been pushing for proactive regulation of AI which he believes is a “fundamental risk to the existence of civilization.” Zuckerberg denounced the warnings as “pretty irresponsible” and “negative.”

We can’t really predict if humanity will face an epic terminator type of robot takeover, however according to Musk, “until people see robots going down the street killing people, they don’t know how to react, because it seems so ethereal.”

What is remarkable is that AI based machines are learning on their own from examples and a system of feedback. Machines can keep improving their systems without human input and are instead solving their own problems.

How machine learning is evolving

Machine learning has mainly advanced in two categories – cognition and perception. For example, voice recognition systems such as Siri, Alexa, Echo and Google assistant, have become three times as fast as typing on a cell phone, with accurate results. Machine learning systems are also proving to be highly efficient digital learners.

Google researchers are working on a new approach that will add an imagination-based system to AI. DeepMind has the potential to include imagination to its planning. “We have seen some tremendous results in this area – particularly in programs like AlphaGo, which use an ‘internal model’ to analyse how actions lead to future outcomes in order to reason and plan. These internal models work so well because environments like Go are ‘perfect’ – they have clearly defined rules which allow outcomes to be predicted very accurately in almost every circumstance.” - Deepmind.com

A recent development from the Facebook AI Research Lab (FAIR), received much excitement in the media when their chatbots started creating and conversing with each other in their own language. The bots evolved from the standard scripts and started communicating in an entirely new language, which they created on their own without any human input. Facebook has since corrected the experiment and we will most likely see more developments in the future when machines don’t follow scripts. The interesting fact here is that Facebook is developing bots that have reasoning capabilities and can negotiate in conversations.

AI in business is already seeing a transformational impact in many industries including health care, retail, manufacturing, travel, finance, education, marketing, law, insurance and more. AI is driving change in business processes, models and occupational tasks.

Here are a few examples of AI impacting industries

Amazon is the world’s largest internet-based retailer by total sales, serving millions of customers across the world. At present, there are approximately 80 million Amazon Prime members making up 64 percent of all households in the United States. Amazon reportedly has 45,000 robots across its 20 fulfilment centres, in conjunction with its 230,000 employees. Amazon Robotics has goals to automate its fulfilment centres by taking advantage of technologies in mobile, robots, drones, control software, language perception, depth-sensing systems, machine  learning, object and speech recognition.

In health care, machine learning systems can scan and identify various health problems such as potential cancer cells. This frees-up time for health care professionals to focus on other areas such as critical cases, taking care of patients and coordinating with other physicians.

In the financial sector, machine learning is being used in cyber security to detect malware, prevent fraud and money laundering. Machine learning/AI is also being used to decide trades on Wall Street, reviewing of loan contracts and analysing credit risks.

AI has the potential to reach superhuman levels of performance in many areas, according to experts. We are already seeing AI in various spheres of business from sales forecasting, HR decisions such as whom to hire, predicting customer needs and expectations. AI and machine learning is based on data and algorithms and these systems are becoming more available to businesses. Microsoft, Google and Salesforce are few examples of companies that provide AI infrastructure via the cloud for businesses.

AI in day-to-day lif

If you are using social media, digital personal assistants, google maps, self-driving cars, online banking and shopping, you are already interacting with an AI based system.

A key development in AI is the improvement of image recognition. Image recognition is being used in many areas such as replacing identity cards, social media, self-driving cars and more. When you post a photo with friends on Facebook and other apps, the image is often recognised with people’s names popping up and prompting you to tag them.

Google has a Cloud Vision API that enables “developers to understand the content of an image by encapsulating powerful machine learning models in an easy to use REST API. It quickly classifies images into thousands of categories (e.g., “sailboat”, “lion”, “Eiffel Tower”), detects individual objects and faces within images, and finds and reads printed words contained within images.’’

AI is creating news content, social media prompts and targeted advertising. Many news outlets are using AI to generate news stories, especially for Sports segments. AI content writing programs use vast amounts of data and then structure the information into a ‘human sounding’ article. The AI-based programme,  WordSmith, produced 1.5 billion pieces of content in 2016.

Facebook uses AI to personalise newsfeeds and customise posts based on the individual user’s interests. Facebook’s DeepText  “can understand with near-human accuracy the textual content of several thousand posts per second, spanning more than 20 languages.” DeepText can predict user intent, for example, you may want to order a pizza based on what you typed on messenger. You typed “I am hungry” and DeepText predicts you want to order pizza based on your profile analytics. DeepText can analyse information and provide content you are likely to be most interested in.

A positive prediction is that AI will be used in the future to reduce commuting with self-driving cars, ride sharing and smart traffic lights. Experts claim that efficient ride sharing will reduce road traffic by up to 75 percent.

There are many more specific areas where AI is impacting daily life. For example, in the gaming industry and hobbies such as chess. AI has many capabilities and is most likely to become even more integrated into daily life.

Three key ways AI is helping in marketing:

Smarter customer journey mapping

AI is creating a more relevant and timely customer journey and interaction based on the individual customer’s requirements. AI is effective in analysing vast amounts of data and algorithms to map out customer patterns. The exciting thing about AI for marketers is that it is making it easier to create customer engagement based on each customer’s purchasing path and individual preferences.

AI is helping to:

– Predict customer needs and make better decisions on types of content to promote
– Promote messages and promotions at the best times based on customer interests
– Discover new customer behaviours and insights
– Prompt customers on taking action
– Automate and manage campaigns
– Identify customer patterns and preferences

AI and content management​

“Content marketing is no longer a numbers game. It’s a game of relevance.” ~ Jason Miller

You are most likely familiar with the adage in social media marketing, “Content is King.” This is true when you add a relevant message, on the right channel and at the right time. AI is enabling marketers to target specific messages and content that is relevant and interesting to the individual consumer.

Based on behaviours and preferences, AI systems can help deliver the right message, promotion, solution and product recommendation to each individual. Many companies such as Amazon and Netflix have recommendation systems that prompts the user to check “recommendations” and see what else they maybe “interested in”.

Content curation enables higher engagement on mobile, websites, social media, online shopping, email and digital newsletters by showing content that is specific to the consumer.

There are many content marketing tools available. Platforms such as Salesforce and HubSpot also provide data to help marketers build on customer personas. It is becoming easier to create targeted content, offer the right promotions on the right digital platforms, optimise websites, create mobile apps, and personalise promotional emails due to AI-based systems that track user patterns.

How AI is changing customer interaction with brands

AI-based chatbots have evolved into understanding natural language without input and direct commands. These external-facing customer agents are proving to be effective in managing large volumes of customer inquiries and responding to requests. Customer response and satisfaction is key for any business or brand, especially in this digital era where brand image ranks high.

Companies such as GE are using machine-learning-based systems to help manage customer service requests. GE’s SmartAssist.io system recently raised $5M Series A for its AI-based customer service platform. According to SmartAssist’s CEO, Pradeep Rathinam, “the SmartAssist team plans to expand its service to also support chat-based customer service systems — millennials don’t exactly enjoy picking up the phone to talk to a customer service agent.” Read this article to learn more about SmartAssist.

Chatbots have various features such as responding to customer requests, taking orders on Facebook Messenger, replying to comments and queries on social media. An exciting feature of chatbots is its predictive capabilities. Chatbots can learn from each customer interaction by gathering information and predicting expectations. This information can be used to offer solutions, marketing promotions and advertising based on the customer’s requirements.

Using bots for superior customer engagement, increasing sales and brand engagement

At this year’s F8 conference, Facebook VP of messaging products, David Marcus pointed out “People prefer to use Messenger to interact with companies.” At the conference, Marcus mentioned many companies have increased orders, bookings, sales and productivity due to Facebook Messenger bots. With 1.2 billion active monthly users on Facebook Messenger and 65 million active businesses on Facebook, it is no surprise that Facebook Messenger bots are an effective tool to scale business.

Bots on social platforms are providing an option of instant messaging rather than waiting on the phone for a customer agent or an email response. “Messaging with businesses is on the rise, with over 2 billion messages sent between people and businesses — including automated conversations — each month,” according to Kemal El Moujahid, product manager, Messenger.

Conclusion

“Artificial intelligence will reach human levels by around 2029. Follow that out further to, say in 2045, we will have multiplied the intelligence, the human biological machine intelligence of our civilization a billion-fold.” — Ray Kurzweil

The subject of AI is so vast and open to debate. What is definite is that AI is in a remarkable growth phase. According to the Analyst Firm, Research and Markets, the global AI market will grow to $23.4 billion by 2025. AI is set to transform the future. Read my  article to learn more.

 

Written by Shairoz Az – Communications

LinkedIn: https://ca.linkedin.com/in/shairoz-az-9a1492b

How and why an agile workforce works.

The concept of an agile workplace has been growing in popularity for the last decade or so. Spurred on by the growth of younger, nimbler global tech companies, it has come to epitomize the fluid, more dynamic and connected world that we live in. And rightly so. When looking at the workforce of today, it is being noted that traditional methods cannot keep up with the pace of change in the digital age. Furthermore, with the rise of the millennials, work is viewed as an extension of who you are, rather than merely a pay cheque. Thus, forward-thinking businesses are beginning to learn that their workforce strategy has the potential to be a major competitive advantage. In 2015 millennials became the largest share of the workforce and by 2025 that number will be 76 percent globally. With that fact comes the inevitable truth that businesses need to adapt to the changing environments that they find themselves in, to ensure that they survive and thrive.

As workplaces evolve, and the demand for contingent workers rises, we are starting to see a greater variety of workforce staffing solutions that businesses can incorporate into their strategies. Thanks to unprecedented mobility and connectivity in the digital age, workforce dynamics are growing and changing at a rapid pace.

On the one side, companies and leadership are looking at their business and their workforce with an idea to reduce risk and to increase any potential upside. On the other, employees and society are looking to create better lifestyles and work for a purpose. This leads us to a solution of a workforce that is agile, flexible and adaptable.

But what exactly does it mean to be an agile worker?

Agile working supports a collaborative way of doing business and, with the right technology, it gives people the ability to work wherever they happen to be and whenever it suits them to do so. From an employer perspective, an agile workforce allows the creation of a workforce that is flexi and can meet demand while reducing or even eliminating downtime. Not only are there significant cost saving opportunities through a reduction of expenses for office space and equipment, but also through the outsourcing of all the labour involved in recruiting, screening and interviewing candidates. It can be an efficient tool for businesses to screen their employees (“temp to hire”) and choose the best candidate for the given positions. Furthermore, companies can choose from a broad pool of skilled, experienced specialists to maximize project efficiency. In the case of organizations that rely on remote working, this also means the choice to hire from areas where salaries are lower for equally talented candidates. Providing flexibility for employees can also cause a boost in retention rates. Employees who need to take time out of the office or travel for personal reasons do not need to move jobs or terminate their contract. Business carries on as usual from a different location.

From a resource perspective, there are many benefits too. In this type of environment, work becomes an activity rather than a place as, provided you have the right technology and infrastructure supporting you, you can work from anywhere. In a recent survey, 86% of independent contractors, state their level of job satisfaction as being either good or excellent. A big factor in this is the ability to have greater variety in their role as well as greater work life balance. Agile workers are output focussed and the demand for flexible work is on the rise. Interest in flexible working increased by more than 40% in 12 countries across the world, per a 2015 survey. Many qualified potential employees are looking for flexibility – and companies who don’t offer it may be missing out on great talent.

While there are many compelling reasons why companies should adopt an agile mentality, many find it a challenge. Perhaps they have difficulty letting go of control, or maybe they just don’t trust employees to perform when they aren’t being watched. Despite this, any organisation that does set out to create an agile work environment is on track to developing a more responsive, efficient and effective company, which will improve their business performance, employee engagement and increase customer satisfaction. By empowering their employees to work how, where and when they choose, they create a win-win situation all round.

 

Nikki Benfield is the Global Lead: Business Development for VentureWeb (and part of the agile workforce).

The secret to being a ‘boss’ boss.

On a recent trip to the UK, I had the good fortune of meeting up with an ex-Manager of mine who I haven’t worked with in over 10 years.  We spent some of our time together reminiscing about the experiences that we had shared while working together. I left the lunch feeling both nostalgic and privileged about the opportunities I have had by working for unforgettable people. As I think back over my career, the single biggest factor in determining whether I was happy, productive, recognised, developing or duly rewarded was my boss at the time. Good bosses or managers are the best thing you can have while shaping your career.  

Throughout my career, I believe I have been lucky. For the most part, I’ve worked with inspirational leaders who had a vested interest in my career growth and success. I’ve never been in a role where I haven’t felt as though I was developing or learning, and I have worked for many people, with different leadership styles, who were committed to my development. What made them great leaders or bosses? If I think about it, it was different things each time but, if I were to try and sum it up, it boils down to 5 key factors: Cutting-edge, Committed, Consistent, Concerned and Conclusive.  

Cutting-edge innovation: Getting you to move out of your comfort zone and stretch yourself to ensure you are growing, learning and innovating constantly. This is the person who puts you on a continual learning journey, always sees more in you than you may see in yourself and helps you to see it too. They are leaders who are passionate, push the envelope, dream big and show you the kind of big ideas that you can accomplish when you put your mind to it.  My best example of this was when my boss at the time asked me if one of the vendors who was supporting me in a local role, could fulfill that function for the countries in the rest of the world. I hadn’t even considered it or how it would work but she planted the seed and left me to make it grow.  

Committed 

Great bosses are committed to coaching and development. They move obstacles out of the way for their teams and recognise what’s unique about each team member. They know their strengths, weaknesses, likes, and dislikes, and they use these insights to draw the very best from each person. I had experienced a significant challenge with a global team leader where I had not followed global protocol due to the demands from local leadership. My boss got on the phone, explained the situation of balancing global and local requirements and calmed the waters – leaving me with a win/win all round.  

Consistency is key

Consistency in their style, consistency in their feedback and decision making, consistency in their ability to not micromanage and empower their people to make their own decisions – a great boss is always consistent in their approach. I believe that I work best with people who inspire others to take accountability and responsibility for their own work area while providing high level guidance.  

Concerned and caring 

A great boss is concerned and cares, and they pass this habit onto their team. Unforgettable bosses are passionate about what they do. They are human and they are humble. They believe in what they’re trying to accomplish and they have fun doing it. This makes everyone else want to be like them. My trip to London was one of the best examples of this – it’s been more than 10 years since we have been in touch, but we picked up like it was yesterday. Human to human, we can’t ask for more! 

Conclusive

Coherent decision-making, open and honest, providing direct feedback and definite in their approach.  A great boss doesn’t pass uncertainty down to their team members but handles pressure with ease. A great boss is open to addressing their mistakes so that everyone can learn from them and relates to their people as a person first and a boss second.  It takes a truly good person to admit to one of their team that they may have been wrong and to work together to fix something. That is where some of your great learnings come from.  

There is a quote that says “In most cases, being a good boss means hiring talented people and getting out of their way”.  Need I say more?! 

 

Nikki Benfield is the Global Lead: Business Development at VentureWeb who has been lucky enough to have had 5 great bosses. Like what you read? Contact Nikki here.  

The AI revolution – part 1

What exactly is Artificial Intelligence (AI)?

AI as a concept has gone far beyond sci-fi machines made popular on TV shows such as Star Trek. AI has seen some dramatic changes recently.

AI is still based on creating machines that can think like humans, however we have seen some major advances in this field. AI is a system of machine intelligence that can perform tasks with the capacity of a basic thought process similar to computers and binary logic.

AI technology is already impacting our lives with the use of smart cars, video gaming, virtual assistants, news creation, surveillance, smart homes, wearable technology and more.

How AI is shaping the future

On a personal level people have already assimilated with AI on a day-to-day basis from smartphones, smart cars, banking, smart home devices and wearables. For example, most of us rely on car navigation systems for directions when looking for the nearest restaurant or gas station. The use of such technologies and our reliance on such systems is going to grow exponentially as we see more advances in AI.

Virtual personal assistants – AI is able to gather information on your requests based on your speech and then give you results that are specific to your preferences. It is a system that can learn about its users. In the future AI will also predict its user’s needs. A key example is Microsoft Cortana that is able to go through vast amounts of data to organise, track and analyse its user’s preferences and tailor results to meet the user’s specific request.

Example: Cortana, Siri and Google Now are digital personal assistants that use your voice to provide you with information that you requested. It could be asking what meetings you have scheduled that day or where the next Starbucks coffee shop is. Your virtual assistant will find the information you asked for and deliver it via your phone, apps, in-car systems etc.

Another interesting example is how AI played a role in the Trump election campaign. Cambridge Analytica provided an AI based system for the Trump campaign. Their system gathered vast amounts of data about consumers and their lifestyles. This enabled psychographic profiles of American voters. Information and data gathering by companies like Cambridge Analytica means we now have access to huge amounts of data about almost anything we need insights on.

The big data and machine learning revolution

“Machine learning is the science of getting computers to act without being programmed, and is used in autonomous cars, speech-recognition and internet search engines…” Chief Executive Officer Jeff Bezos, Amazon.

AI is impacting nearly all industries from health, travel, banking, security, business and service industries. For example, in healthcare AI is already being used to design treatment plans and with digital data Doctors can access all the information they need to make important decisions.

AI and machine learning is largely dependent on accessing vast amounts of data. This digital data is now available on various cloud based applications. In addition to this, companies such as Baidu, Amazon, Microsoft, IBM and Google have created machine learning platforms. All these factors are going to revolutionise AI technology and what we are seeing is just the beginning stage.

How AI is changing business and marketing

AI is like a mega brain that can crunch through big data within seconds. What makes this so exciting for marketers is that the information provided is fast, precise, personal and reliable. AI takes us to another level of social engineering where content and marketing messages are easily adaptable to what works best on a specific type of audience. Research from Demandbase reveals that eighty percent of marketing leaders feel AI will revolutionise marketing by 2020.

We can see why Chief Marketing Officers (CMOs) have one of the most challenging jobs in the corporate world. Russell Reynolds did a study that indicated CMOs and their teams face intense pressure in this fast-paced digital era based on technological disruption. However, adapting to these changes fast will enable marketers and businesses to scale for growth.

According to a CB insights report, the company, Amazon, is getting started on newer initiatives like cloud services, artificial intelligence, and logistics to take its business to the next level. “Amazon is the exception to nearly every rule in business. Rising from humble beginnings as a Seattle-based internet bookstore, Amazon has grown into a propulsive force in at least five different giant industries: retail, logistics, consumer technology, cloud computing, and most recently, media and entertainment.” CB Insights

Here are four key examples of AI in marketing

AI-powered machines can create targeted content – Using language processing, AI can analyse user interests and geography to create copy that is relevant to the target audience. It is remarkable to see content generated by AI machines precisely for its users based on psychographics. In addition to creating content at scale, AI is helping streamline the content creation process and also reducing costs. This allows marketers to spend time on other strategies to help accelerate business growth.

AI and search engines – Many marketers can agree search algorithms can be tricky to manage with targeting the right keyword phrases, titles and alt tags to rank at the top of search results. AI search engine optimisation will be more streamlined based on user experiences and big data to produce precise results. A key example is Google’s RankBrain that uses machine learning to process its search results and queries. The RankBrain AI based system can guess what words or phrases might have similar meanings in order to filter and deliver precise search results.

Ad targeting – Machine learning is able to provide more in-depth analysis of user behaviours, preferences and rising trends. Ads can then be served according to a recommendation system that targets specific ads that are relevant to the target audience. For example, programmatic ads will be more likely to achieve user engagement and clicks since the content will match user preferences based on demographics. AI also makes optimisation of ads more efficient based on algorithms that can help achieve the best cost per acquisition (CPA) from the available data.

Augmented Reality (AR) and Virtual Reality (VR): AI technology has provided an opportunity for users to interact with brands in an immersive and layered context. AR and VR are offering creative experiences for users to actively engage with brands. For example, the Pokémon GO AR app was a huge success and we are seeing the demand for AR go beyond gaming. Many industries are creating immersive experiences to engage with their audience. This has been effective in education, travel, health, architecture and retail. AR is exciting, social, engaging and personal, it integrates virtual content into the real world. Marketers and businesses are adapting AR to enhance brand engagement by finding new ways to interact with their audiences based on creating immersive experiences. Here are some AR examples: Lowe’s Holoroom, IKEA’s Augmented Reality Catalog, Lego X

There are many more areas in which AI is impacting businesses and marketing, such as language recognition, website design, sales forecasting, customer service chatbots, product pricing, preventing fraud, data security and more.

Conclusion

Artificial intelligence and the digital revolution is transforming businesses and the way we live quite dramatically. There will be challenges in adapting to these new technologies at such a fast pace but there are also great opportunities being presented for creating more efficient systems and achieving more growth.

Written by Shairoz Az – Communications

LinkedIn: https://ca.linkedin.com/in/shairoz-az-9a1492b

http://www.strategy3inspired.com/blog/how-artificial-intelligence-is-changing-how-we-live-how-we-do-business-and-how-we-market