From the course: Artificial Intelligence for Marketing

What humans do better than machines

From the course: Artificial Intelligence for Marketing

Start my 1-month free trial Buy for my team

What humans do better than machines

“

- Skynet from the "Terminator" learned at a geometric rate and became self-aware in 3 1/2 weeks. In panic, humans tried to pull the plug. Skynet fought back. You are so much smarter than an artificial intelligence system. Can AI calculate lightning fast? Yes. Does it have common sense? No. Does AI have logic? Indubitably. Does it reason? It does not. Does AI possess curiosity? Not a trace. You're not going to be successful with artificial intelligence unless you understand where it falls down on the job. Stick with me for a couple of minutes and you'll understand how important you the human are to AI working well in marketing. Without empathy, common sense, and emotional understanding, artificial intelligence is just blinking lights in clockwork. You add humanity to the picture, insight, inspiration, creativity. So your first job when dealing with an AI system is all about the smell test. When the sophisticated AI model calculates that you would sell more snow tires in the summer because, hey, there's no competitive promotions, the smell test is quick to point out the error. When your algorithm spits out an auto response that the company does not accept returns after 30 days, your smell test says, hold on there. This is one of our favorite customers or one of our most important clients or one of the most vocal influencers. We will happily accept their return and apologize. The smell test uses empathy, people skills, and sales tactics learned over the years, skills that only you the human possess. Your job, your superpower, is to identify what problem needs to be solved, invent and adopt new ideas, detect when the result doesn't pass the smell test. The ability to look at one thing and see another, the power of analogies, the quest for new knowledge, these are the human traits that you must embrace and develop. They are what sets us apart from the computer. You can strengthen your human talent with some cognitive exercises. Spot the relationships between things. How do things interrelate? Look at things from a different angle. What if they were upside down or ran backwards? Read up on critical thinking. Am I keeping an open mind? Test your assumptions. What would disprove my belief? Spend one hour a week studying cognitive bias to understand how your own brain is tripping you up. AI is amazing, but humans are awesome. Just ask Shakespeare. "What a piece of work is man, how noble in reason, how infinite in faculty, in form and moving how express and admirable, in action how like an angel, in apprehension how like a god."

Contents