Advertising Week 2018 | Diana Arutyunyan
The conference that I have decided to attend in 2018 was “Advertising Week”. There were many interesting topics to choose from, but one that stood out to me above all the others was the discussion of AI. The panelists who participated in this discussion were the Vice President of Quartz, and the Chief Executive Officer of GumGum.
Both speakers began to describe ways in which they utilize AI in their companies. Quartz experiments with AI by using it to build one-on-one relationships with individual users. One example that was used was: Quartz partnered with HBO’s show “Westworld” by creating an AI host where the viewer can interact with every time they watch an episode. What this does is serves the whole premise of the show by manipulating the viewers’ notion of reality, which is essentially what “Westworld” is all about. One thing about this application that the speaker stressed was the fact that this particular AI application is a marriage of both technology and human input. For example, she mentioned that the AI host was “created” by a team of writers who directed the AI on what to say. In other words, the AI didn’t automatically generate the interaction between the viewer and the host, rather it was a team effort so to speak. GumGum on the other hand, seems to be less creative with their use of AI. For instance, they would use AI to track as well as understand the effective ROI’s in sponsorships on various consumption channels.
One of the issues with AI that the VP or Quartz mentioned was that there isn’t a lot of “scale across messaging platforms." I thought this was very interesting because it seems like there is a struggle between traditional messaging platforms and what is possible through the use of AI. AI may be improving at a much faster rate than traditional or even current messaging platforms, and this, in my opinion, can create a lot of confusion on what is possible in terms of AIs’ application in marketing.
The CEO of GumGum brought about a few interesting points regarding the future of AI. He mentioned that he recently learned that commercial pilots only fly 7 minutes, while the rest is flown by the machine. To me this is interesting because when we as a society think of AI, we don’t necessarily think of small moving parts that contribute to a whole, rather a whole in and of itself. Artificial intelligence seems to be much bigger in our minds than to simply serve as a cog in a seemingly small machine. This makes me question the possibilities that AI can open for marketers. If we cannot easily utilize or access AI for marketing purposes just yet, can we perhaps use it in an indirect way? Can it open other doors while it’s being utilized in other spaces?
VP of Quartz mentioned an intriguing experimentation that her company has been doing. They saw potential for the use of AI in the medical field, and their team has been working with health professionals to try and create an algorithm to detect lung cancer. Their results amounted to a “93% accuracy to what doctors were proving out." She also mentioned that there is a lot of potential in the field of transplants, where the sophistication of artificial intelligence may be able to match you up with other donors in the world.
The host of this talk asked both panelists whether they see any problems to look out for in the future of AI. The CEO of GumGum mentioned the issues of employment. He believes that AI can replace human workers, and already has, and this can be problematic, as well as scary. I do agree with the point that AI is going to replace some jobs in certain industries, however I do not agree with the notion that this movement is going to lead to a negative outcome. If the majority of people who make up the low income/middle class cannot afford to buy certain goods, then AI’s replacing them will essentially be pointless. I personally believe that AI will open other job opportunities that did not previously exist. AI will force our society to progress and grow beyond what we are used to and are currently aware of, and progress is always a beautiful thing.
After attending various other talks during this conference, I can safely say that this was by far the richest, and most intriguing conversation that I have had the pleasure of attending. The potential for AI is so vast, that it’s difficult to grasp how far beyond our imagination it can go, and that to me is really exciting.
