Prediction 2 – Track 2 Has More Distance
Track 2 (Analysts and Strategists) will be safer than Track One (Data Development), at least initially, from increasing AI and tool sophistication.
Where Track 1 is closest to code and creating the solution, Track 2 is close to the stakeholder and understanding the many facets of the problem. These problems are more likely to be more human and political in nature and so less predictable or patternable.
On writing this, the news was awash with ChatGPT, along with the image generators like Midjourney or Crayon AI that can be used to create weird trippy art and pictures. If you need a picture of a pizza in a dishwasher, this is now possible at the touch of a button, with plausible detail. Of course, the application of Crayon AI is much broader. An AI model that can draw images from any text prompt has the potential to revolutionise various industries, from design to education, by automating the creation of visual content in a fast and cost-effective way.
Source: https://www.craiyon.com/
ChatGPT has obvious immediate opportunities for already formulaic writing used prevalently in digital marketing, such as writing performance ad copy and content for design to appeal to search engines rather than people, but don’t take my word for it. The following was prompted by me but written and unedited by ChatGPT:
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‘The rise of AI is affecting the job market and making some roles vulnerable to automation. AI is being used in various industries, from manufacturing to healthcare. As AI evolves and becomes more sophisticated, the types of jobs that are most at risk of being replaced by AI will change. Administrative roles are highly vulnerable to automation, including data entry and customer service tasks. Customer service jobs can be replaced by AI-powered chatbots that can respond quickly and accurately to customer queries. Transportation roles are also at risk as autonomous vehicles are becoming increasingly common. Finally, roles in banking and finance can be automated with AI algorithms that can automate financial processes and provide financial advice. While the short-term impact of job loss is concerning, the long-term future could also bring new opportunities. It is crucial to note that AI cannot replace human creativity, and there will still be a need for human involvement in many areas.’
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The applications are truly staggering at this stage, although prompting and validation are still needed. We need people to create prompts for the AI and work on revisions back and forth, whereas the heavy lifting is automated and reformulated based on online information already available; the actual seed of creation and validation is still coming from us.
However, AI is already moving so fast that it’s hard to know how far this will go. At the time of writing this book, the ‘godfather’ of AI had just disowned his own creations: ‘The man often touted as the godfather of AI has quit Google, citing concerns over the flood of misinformation, the possibility for AI to upend the job market, and the “existential risk” posed by the creation of a true digital intelligence.’ – The Guardian.
The limitation of automated intelligence, which could be very good for us as a species, is that it does not understand what it’s doing. There is no self. A good example of this is the comparison between Go and Chess. AI is excellent at Chess, but it can’t play Go, at least well enough to beat most good human players. The reason is that Go typically has too many variables to compute, and the machine learning programs also find it very difficult to anticipate humans deliberating trying to trick them. They are just following the pattern-like structure of any code; if they do this, then I should do that. They don’t know they are playing Go against a human or anything else.
This is why soft skills like people skills within Track 2 will have more distance than those in more programmatic skills in Track 1. AI is here to make humans more efficient and effective; it won’t replace humans, at least not yet, but marketers using AI will replace marketers not using AI.
