AI’s rapid evolution over the past year has been nothing short of extraordinary, a fact underscored by the recent CES 2024 showcase. This event highlighted AI’s expanding role in various industries, from home automation and healthcare to personal technology. Innovations presented, such as advanced AI-driven laptops, health monitoring devices, and even AI companions for pets, illustrated the technology’s increasing integration and significance in enhancing daily human experiences.

And AI shows no signs of slowing as Forrester estimates that almost 100% of organizations will be using AI by 2025 while the AI software market is set to reach $37 billion by the same year. The technology continues growing more advanced and intelligent, demonstrating the importance of its adoption across industries to ensure a competitive edge. It also suggests a future where AI is integral not just in optimizing processes but also in shaping new ways of living and working.

Hopes and Worries with AI

I remain equal parts hopeful and concerned when it comes to the increasing speed, intelligence, and capabilities of AI.

Firstly, the concerns are plentiful – from its potential to spread misinformation, enable fraud, help students cheat assignments, and dissolve many ideas of creativity and trademark. Furthermore, as these technologies become more accessible and pervasive, they could cause seismic shifts in how we understand basic tenets like the skills needed for future generations or the fair pay, treatment, and reskilling of those potentially displaced by this technology.

However, my hopes are difficult to ignore. As many people have noted about AI and its generative capabilities – it cannot create something new, simply aggregate from various sources. This is what gives me some hope that the technology will augment the way we do things rather than replace people’s roles outright.

AI is an assistant in what we do.  When manufacturing shifted towards robotics, it replaced specific functions, but we’re still some steps away from entirely people-free factories. There’s always a need for human input and oversight – not because the robots will take over, but because they still need some hand holding in thinking and creating like us.

Sure, there are factories and mining sites that operate autonomously to some degree, but it’s still impossible without some human input. And while there’s real potential to replace hundreds of different functions and tasks through automation – the hopeful part of me believes this will simply enable people to focus on other skills, ideas, and opportunities.

The Importance of Human Centricity

It cannot be a coincidence that this era has seen two major disruptions in the work environment – the integration of intelligent technologies and the increasing focus on establishing more human-centric values, cultures, and workplaces. They may seem like polar opposites, but they complement one another nicely – as technology automates the more tedious and mundane tasks of our jobs, people need to be more conscious of what they truly need to operate at their best.

That’s one reason why AI will always be caught in that ‘uncanny valley’ – it lacks the human experience, context, and notions of empathy that make us who we are. While AI can crunch vast amounts of data and make accurate predictions about potential trends, risks, or opportunities – it doesn’t know how to contextualise that information into something easy to understand, nor can it truly calculate for every anomaly, every minute shift in human behaviours, needs, preferences, or goals that can cause significant disruptions on a macro scale.

Enabling Creativity Through Insights

One major benefit of gen AI’s increasing popularity is the fact that various creative disciplines have become far more accessible to a wider audience. Photo editing software has integrated AI to enable visual designers to work more seamlessly, leveraging LLMs to simply give AI written prompts and cycle through its output. A process that would previously take hours now takes seconds and no longer requires any training or experience to execute.

Overall, I see this as a positive – creative industries have often been restrictive in terms of learning the necessary skills and acquiring the right equipment. From expensive software for photo and video editing to the costly cameras and art supplies that enable people to enter creative fields – AI is enabling more people try their hand at creative arts and industries.

That’s why I believe marketing will remain a people-centric sector, blending science and art to continue defining how we engage with audiences and convert them to consumers. In the same way customer data informs audience personas and marketing approaches, AI and machine learning can provide more granular insights, automated functions, and streamlined creative functions so marketers can focus on skills that cannot be automated like problem solving, connecting directly with audiences, and developing new ways of working.

Redefining Marketing with AI

A blog I wrote previously offered some interesting case studies of big brands leveraging AI to deliver more personalised and engaging marketing content – from chatbots to user-generated art. However, AI can also be used for dynamic creative optimisation, which automatically generates ad creatives in real time based on customer data, such as demographics and interests.

It then adjusts targeting parameters, segments audiences more precisely, and improves the performance of ad campaigns. Furthermore, AI algorithms can automatically translate content so marketers can deliver ads in multiple languages quickly and efficiently.

AI can analyse customer data to highlight key trends and patterns to predict future behaviours and preferences. These predictive analytics can empower marketers to make more informed decisions when it comes to allocating resources, investing in new initiatives and campaigns, and determining what types of content are most effective in engaging audiences.

These intelligent technologies can also detect usual patterns and anomalies such as sudden spikes in clicks or impressions from a specific location or device, which may indicate fraudulent activity and potential security risks.

Key Concerns and Considerations

While AI and its generative features can provide benefits for marketing and other creative sectors, it also has real potential to spread misinformation and perpetuate potential biases. Since AI algorithms are generally written by human users, it can include unconscious biases that get embedded into its machine learning models. This illustrates the importance of extensive testing and diverse teams to reduce the risk of biased outcomes.

For example, a US Department of Commerce studyfound that facial recognition AI often misidentifies people of colour, which could lead to further mistreatment of even wrongful arrests if these technologies are used by authorities like law enforcement.

A study by UC Berkeley found that several mortgage algorithms in financial services companies have also consistently charged Latino and Black borrowers higher interest rates. That’s why 81% of business leaders want government regulation to define and prevent AI bias, according to DataRobot’s State of AI Bias report.

These potential risks are why it’s so important for organisations to clearly define what responsible and ethical AI use looks like, including guardrails and guidelines for training algorithms. Businesses must also be transparent with customers and policymakers to help them understand how those algorithms were created and how they make decisions based on data.

Developing Future Proof Skills

The old model of waiting for someone to teach you has become inefficient as it’s becoming more common to see self-directed learning within organisations. However, AI takes this idea one step further by identifying skill gaps to provide personalised training in real time with the ability to tailor courses and content based on people’s needs and preferences.

AI cannot replace human creativity and strategic thinking. However, it can assist in analysing large sums of data, but it’s ultimately up to humans to interpret and act on those insights. That’s why it’s important for humans to become better at providing context, understanding human behaviour, empathy, and cultural nuances to identify where AI can create the best impact. It’s not about knowing what the data is but what it means.

There will always be core fundamental processes and skills that organisations will want to keep for their people. The challenge is always looking for better ways to do things, remaining abreast of the next big wave as the technology is always learning and developing new capabilities.

AI isn’t a replacement for human intuition and creativity, so businesses must ensure they use AI in combination with human insights and perspectives, finding the right balance of human and AI to be more efficient, effective, and holistic.

Enhancing Creativity and Talent at FINN

Here at FINN Partners, we use AI for content creation and ideation as it provides us with the speed and scale to deliver more. I find it’s like having a personal assistant in lieu of having someone to brainstorm with, asking it to help with certain tasks, particularly the more repetitive and lower-value elements of our work. This frees up resources to look at things more strategically.

A new area we’re exploring with internal AI use is in our people processes, such as recruitment and talent development, as we believe our people are our greatest asset. As AI can provide a wealth of insights and analyse them quickly, we’re speeding up more tedious processes so our team can focus on tasks and skills that cannot be automated.

In line with the evolving learning and development trends for 2024, we’re also exploring the use of AI to create more personalized learning paths and immersive experiences, continuous learning analytics, and dynamic content development. These initiatives reflect our commitment to enhancing our team’s capabilities without losing the essential human touch. Our aim is to leverage AI not as a replacement, but as a tool to enrich the professional growth and development of our team members.

The key is to not rely on AI as a crutch; using any efficiency gains to oversee and verify AI’s outputs while ensuring we maintain that essential human touch in everything we do – from content creation and audience engagement to talent attraction and retention. It’s not about replacing people or jobs – it’s about enhancing what we do through technology so we can pay closer attention to what matters most in our roles.

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Have a question on AI in marketing? Want to know how I can help you scale and enhance your inhouse marketing capabilities using AI? Reach out to me at joyce.liong@gmail.com