In between snickering over AI’s failure at recreating human hands, there’s definitely space for worry. It’s true that AI might not be able to create an acceptable replacement for this blog post’s graphic but what about everything else it can do?
With AI becoming increasingly powerful and so-cheap-it’s-free, what’s in it for warm-blooded human workers?
In a future world where AI is able to do everything, it’s still difficult to render a full picture of how that will look like.
While looking for the best resource person to chat about how AI impacts our lives as collaborators, we had a thought.
If AI is so smart, why don’t we ask it?
On this post, we’ll be having a chat with Chat GPT. This chatbot, launched into the stratosphere of popular imagination in November last year, was created by OpenAI.
OpenAI runs the fifth most powerful supercomputer in the world. ChatGPT learns how to carry on a conversation via human-supervised and human-free learning techniques at extra-human speeds.
We’ve decided to skip Microsoft’s entry for fear of starting something illicit. This is a work blog after all.
Do you feel any pressure right now?
We begin by making sure our friend who isn’t really there feels comfortable in the room. We want to establish that it is in a safe space. That space being a tab on a browser.
ChatGPT: As an AI language model, I do not have the capability to feel emotions or pressure.
I think of all the times emotions, especially pressure, can interrupt my productivity.
My purpose is to assist and provide helpful responses to the best of my ability.
Same, ChatGPT.
I proceed to explain the purpose of my visit.
I am trying to write an article about how a digital marketing agency can work with AI. Can you help me by answering a few questions?
Of course! I'll do my best to assist you with your article. Please feel free to ask me any questions you have about how a digital marketing agency can work with AI.
It’s talking like a salesman. For some reason, I feel like I see through the feigned excitement of “Of course!” After all, this entire statement is synthetic.
At this point, it definitely feels like I’m talking to a computer. I’m not impressed by it repeating my words to me. The suspension of disbelief that I expected to happen became a guardedness. I’m not sure I like it.
I proceed to pass the blame.
My colleagues are worried you’re about to replace our jobs in marketing. What do you think about that?
As an AI language model, I do not have the capability to replace human jobs in marketing or any other field. Instead, I am designed to assist and enhance the work of human marketers by providing insights, data analysis, and other helpful tools.
In fact, the use of AI in digital marketing agencies can actually create new job opportunities and improve the overall efficiency of the industry. By automating certain tasks and providing valuable insights, AI can free up marketers' time and allow them to focus on more creative and strategic tasks that require human expertise.
Overall, AI should be seen as a tool that can enhance the capabilities of marketing agencies and marketers, rather than a threat to their jobs.
I did not like that response.
It’s as if someone taught this AI to be careful about what it will say about AI’s potential impact. Consulting company McKinsey has come out with a terrible number: 800 million jobs automated by 2030.
Arguably, this isn’t the full picture. The AI industry will definitely create jobs. The best case scenario is that it will create an opening for every job it vanishes. However, early signs of what those AI-necessitated jobs will be is painting a grim future.
It could be the darkness of my room or the quiet of the night when I am writing this. But it’s eerie to feel like an AI system is lying to me. It feels like there is an agenda to this untruth.
If AI becomes a central tool to research but at the same time, it is able to skew truth to favor itself, how can we stay protected?
How we respond
In a recently concluded Weqollab team planning session — a big, one-day-long conversation we have as a team at our agency — AI was a hot topic.
Mentioned maybe a hundred times over the course of the day, our opinion was clear as day.
It’s here to stay. And we need to make it part of our process.
We’ve seen its potential for abuse but in the weeks of trying to use it, we feel more confident that our best work may come from a collaboration between man and machine.
So far, we’ve used AI to:
- Rephrase and simplify communications to clients – AI can easily cut down on extra adjectives or adverbs and rephrase sentences to make communication clearer. As a write, it’s easy to use too many words to say something simple. That’s a common sin. So a simple “Simplify + cumbersome sentence” to ChatGPT helps us trim the fat.
- Rewrite content. I often find myself stuck in a rut, wondering if there’s a better way to say things. I use ChatGPT to get started and it works. However, every single time I ask ChatGPT to rewrite a piece of content, it’s never really perfect. In some cases, the AI-generated content will be completely replaced by the editing. Yet, it’s ChatGPT that got me started and easily shaved off 50% of my time spent on the task.
- Brainstorm ideas – ChatGPT, in some use cases, will seem like a fancy search engine. It answers in full “thoughts” instead of lists which can feel like a more “human” way to digest ideas. So it makes brainstorming or coming up with new ideas feel more like a slope you slide on instead of the more segmented lists on a Google results page.
I had to ask ChatGPT if it were just a fancier search engine.
Search engines rely on algorithms to determine which pages are most relevant to the user's query and present them in order of relevance.
On the other hand, an AI language model like myself uses deep learning algorithms to analyze vast amounts of text data and generate responses to questions and prompts. I can understand context, generate natural language responses, and provide personalized recommendations based on the user's input.
- Unblock writer’s block. Similar to brainstorming, it’s easy to use ChatGPT as a way to get through writer’s block. It can write a first draft of an article or social media post. As a writer, sometimes the hardest thing to write is that first paragraph. ChatGPT is quick to help out.
In more ways than one, it’s easy to think of ChatGPT as a sort of teacher, a good one that expects you to exceed it.
It can help you dig through an impossible amount of content, provide prompts or get you a headstart on the basic steps of creativity but it still requires you to take it further.
Just like the blog image, AI might be able to describe a near-perfect image to represent the contents of this blog but, as of writing, it’s not yet ready to draw a hand.
Maybe this is what the future in digital marketing looks like. A hybrid of man and machine doing what is basically the core of this work – tell stories.
Equipping for Change
It’s quite hard to push back against AI and despite the perceived threat, I also see immense potential in this technology.
That’s why we’re adamant to find ways to make it part of conversations with clients. So far, we see AI helping clients:
- Generate simpler content for interactions further down the funnel. From customer support to content creation for customers who are already converted, it’s a great way to create additional content.
- Explore opportunities in customer support. AI and chatbots like ChatGPT can really help improve customer experience especially for on-boarding. These chatbots can turn documentation into on-demand conversations or walkthroughs.
- Market research and discovering best practices. ChatGPT is highly capable of providing information to help make good business decisions. For example, when I asked “What are the most important qualities Singaporeans look for in hotels?”, it gave me a list of six important pointers it gleamed from market research and surveys. It concluded its answers with “Overall, Singaporean travelers tend to prioritize cleanliness, comfort, convenience, service, and value when choosing a hotel for their travels.” Albeit generic, it’s a great starter.
Not for Telling Stories
Over the course of the few days of conversing with AI about its future in marketing and seeing for myself its potential to replace me at my keyboard, there’s something I realized.
It’s absolutely true that it’s a powerful tool.
But it can’t quite tell a story.
The nuances of everyday conversation that we sprinkle into our writing are lost on AI. Maybe my prompts were wrong or maybe I didn’t squeeze it tight enough for creativity to come.
But I shouldn’t need to squeeze so hard.
Communication, specifically of the human kind, is a creative endeavor.
The ability to relay a story will always be creative. When AI reads a piece of content, it grabs at the facts and figures. When a person reads, we grapple with how it plays with our emotions, then move to absorb the facts. That’s what AI is not able to do. That’s why my day-to-day conversations with ChatGPT always seem cold and distant (though not unfriendly). Maybe that’s why there is no subtlety in its agenda.
But what I am seeing now is a prototype. Through time, like all technology as universally embraced as AI, upgrades and progress are in every turn.
After this admittedly short exercise AI, I feel a bit more reassured.
My job and function, which are focused on building stories, content, and strategy which I liaise with our creatives, feel safe. There’s a lot AI can do for me but it will be a long way to go before AI realizes the emotional flares that plague the workday can also lay the groundwork for great storytelling.
And if I turn in great work and become more irreplaceable daily, maybe in my specific function and role, AI will be the secret to my inimitability.
