Marketers are always looking for new and innovative ways to communicate with their target audience
In the current space of technology, all eyes are trained on the increasing presence of artificial intelligence, and its far reaching influence across many fields of work, be they creative or scientific, there seems to be an answer for everything in the wealth of opportunities offered by artificial intelligence, and with growing levels of accessibility and lowering barriers to entry, that offer is open to increasingly more people than ever before.
Introducing the Power of a Communications Tool in the Hands of Marketers
So what about marketing? Will that become one of the many fields that people worry will be made redundant by our machine counterparts? It’s extremely unlikely that AI will ever serve as an absolute substitute for the human touch that marketing requires to reach out to clients. That’s not to say there’s no place for artificial intelligence in marketing whatsoever, it cannot be stressed enough that artificial intelligence is a tool of the future that will find a place in every industry, but it will never create a place that is devoid of humans. AI will be an invaluable tool, but it should and shall always remain a tool, for human manipulation, and not the other way around as some irrationally fear.
How Marketers Can Quickly Leverage a Communications Tool to Reach Their Goals
Marketing-specific AI powered tools already exist, and to deny their usefulness would be crass, but that usefulness ties directly from the user. It is likely business owners will believe they can simply punch their needs into ChatGPT, and expect to get a blockbusting marketing campaign out of the other end, and find themselves thoroughly disappointed. Give a marketing professional – not a computer scientist – the same tools, and they’ll put them to much better work than the uninitiated. In just the same way the word processor I’m typing this article into is a tool, artificial intelligence is too. Even when we reach a time when everyone will have access to artificial intelligence, only those prepared, trained, and knowledgeable enough to use it will see any fruit for their labour, and so that very labour will never be out of demand.
What The Future of Marketing Looks Like
Hypothetically considering for a moment that the future will be a landscape dominated by artificial intelligence, it certainly won’t be anything on the market today, and relying on machine learning to patch up the current AIs’ flaws is wishful thinking. ChatGPT, the forefront of discussion around the matter right now, has already shown its numerous cracks, and they run embarrassingly deep. Just in the last few weeks, while ChatGPT might be excused for failing a test considered the hardest in its country, India,[1] or even a quiz posed by a conveyancing solicitor here in the UK[2] – both are only passable by only those with the wealth or specialisation of knowledge to do so – the microsoft backed chatbot was put up against a sixth grader’s maths and science test in Singapore – their equivalent of our 11+ – and resoundingly failed.[3] Reportedly, it scored an average of 16% in Maths, 21% in Science, and 55% in English, though it was noted to have become confused over the homonym ‘value’. This test was administered after the chatbot had already passed an American business MBA and medical practise licence exam, however, after its failure at the primary school level, it seems this conclusion may reveal more about the American tests than the future and capabilities of ChatGPT itself. This isn’t all to say ChatGPT is incapable of creation, after all, the common argument in favour of AI generated art is that all art is based on what the artist has seen before it, however Microsoft is becoming all too aware about ChatGPT’s creativity, as their first public demo of it being used in their Bing search engine demonstrates the chatbot distribute incorrect, misleading and sometimes even entirely made up answers earlier this year.[4] I could talk about trust in AI, and conversely accountability, forever, but I fear my point has been made, and so I shall refrain.
Author
William Raine, Law & Technology Student, University of York
[1] Shubham Singh, ‘ChatGPT fails UPSC exam, answers only 54 questions correctly’ (Business Today, 3 March 2023) <https://www.businesstoday.in/latest/trends/story/chatgpt-fails-upsc-exam-answers-only-54-questions-correctly-372198-2023-03-03> accessed 7 March 2023
[2] Nick Hilborne, ‘ChatGPT fails solicitor’s conveyancing test’ (Legal Futures, 2 March 2023) <https://www.legalfutures.co.uk/latest-news/chatgpt-fails-solicitors-conveyancing-test> accessed 7 March 2023
[3] Mehul Reuben Das, ‘Not smarter than a 6th grader: ChatGPT fails Singapore’s 6th-grade maths and science exams’ (Firstpost, 22 February 2023) <https://www.firstpost.com/world/chatgpt-fails-singapore-6th-grade-maths-and-science-exams-12189482.html> accessed 7 March 2023
[4] Aaron Mok (Business Insider, 15 February 2023) <https://www.businessinsider.com/bings-gpt-powered-ai-chatbot-made-mistakes-demo-like-google-2023-2> accessed 7 March 2023