The Marketer's Job in an AI Future

Whether you're talking about cognitive computing, machine learning, artificial intelligence or its more common acronym, AI, the real topic is machines doing jobs humans used to. What does that mean for marketers in an AI-dominated future? How will the human role change? Are robots going to steal marketing jobs, or elevate them? Let's think it through. Luddites and Automation Automation has always been seen as a threat to human employment. In fact, one of the first uses of sabotage against automation happened back in the 1810s. "Luddite" textile workers destroyed weaving machines that were poised to take their jobs. (Yes, that is where the term "Luddite" comes from.) Today the alarm may be less destructive, but it's still ringing. For example, a few months ago, PWC projected that the U.S. stands to lose 38 percent of its jobs to automation in the next 15 years. And the New York Times's Claire Cain Miller has built her column on cataloging the negative impacts automation will have on jobs. But these analyses focus just on job losses, and that's not the best way to think about automation. After all, the Luddite movement was 100 years ago. While hand-weaving may not be a growth field today, the textile industry employs far more people now than it did then. While automation changes the tasks employers will pay people to do, in the past it has not put populations truly out of work. The jobs change, but they're still there. Analysts are starting to see hope in the AI future on our horizon as well. USA Today recently ran a special report on the impact of automation across the U.S. economy. And while some of the stats in it are eye-popping — PWC believes 45 percent of work activities can be automated (PDF), potentially "saving" $2 trillion in labor costs; McKinsey identified 70 jobs that could have 90 percent of their tasks handled by automation — the overall takeaway is that the economy is not collapsing, it's changing. How Jobs Will Change With AI Quartz is one publication that's taken a positive view of the impact AI will have on humans and our careers. A recent Quartz article by Dennis R. Mortensen argued that AI will elevate our jobs and "restore our humanity." "Each time technology ate one type of jobs, new ones appeared to take their place," says Mortensen. "Human ingenuity did its thing, we adapted, and we survived to live (and work) another century." His big takeaway: "Automation will take away the parts of our jobs we don’t like and leave room for more meaningful work." Now this is Quartz's overall editorial point of view as well. Just like Miller built her NYT column of doomsaying the future of AI, Quartz has built its "Future of Work" section on more rosy prognostication. For example, another article says that automation has "totally eliminated" just one job in the past 50 years. But Quartz isn't alone in seeing a future where robots don't cause the sky to fall on us.. What really inspired this post was a June opinion piece in the Harvard Business Review by Ed Hess that looked more closely at the kinds of things that will be valued from workers in an AI-dominaed world. And the title says it all: "In the AI future, 'Being Smart Will Mean Something Completely Different." "Many experts believe that human beings will still be needed to do the jobs that require higher-order critical, creative, and innovative thinking and the jobs that require high emotional engagement to meet the needs of other human beings. The challenge for many of us is that we do not excel at those skills because of our natural cognitive and emotional proclivities: We are confirmation-seeking thinkers and ego-affirmation-seeking defensive reasoners. We will need to overcome those proclivities in order to take our thinking, listening, relating, and collaborating skills to a much higher level." — Ed Hess The New "Smart" Hess's conclusion is to redefine what it means to be smart. He argues that the kind of intelligence marked by grades and test scores — the kinds of measures that mark smart people as "smarter" than other people — is going to be obsolete. On those terms, no human ever will be smarter than computers can be. Instead, he says we have to begin measuring smart based on higher levels of human thinking and emotional understanding. "The new smart will be determined not by what or how you know, but by the quality of your thinking, listening, relating, collaborating and learning," says Hess. "Quantity is replaced by quality. And that shift will enable us to focus on the hard work of taking our cognitive and emotional skills to a much higher level." To repeat: Quantity will be replaced by quality: The quality of your thinking, listening, relating, collaborating and learning. This would certainly be welcome news to the marketers who've been saying we need to be more human and less technology-oriented. What does it mean to the tasks associated with the marketing role, though? One day, if not today, machines will be able to understand your results and see the trends better than you can. But what they won't be able to see is how those elements actually connect with humans. A cognitive copywriting program may be able to design an email with copy that drives better response, but it won't be able to understand why, or build the marketing strategy that leads to true business growth. Machines will be able to do their own jobs, but they won't be able to design the marketing assembly line those jobs fit into. And while one day AI and machines may be able to develop and create new products, they won't be able build the businesses that sell them or use them. Back to the Mortensen article on Quartz: "Automation will take away the parts of our jobs we don’t like and leave room for more meaningful work." I think that's going to be true. So look around at the really meaningful things you do, the elements of marketing that are not just trafficking, managing, deploying, or assembly-line creative. That's what marketing is going to be in the AI future. The strategy sessions, brainstorming lunches, inspiration boards, big ideas and the big picture ... They may be machine-assisted, but these aspects of marketing aren't going anywhere. And the kinds of thinking and collaboration these tasks need are the skills and intelligence you should invest in for the AI future.

Personnel/HR/Career Management

The Marketer's Job in an AI Future

Luddites and Automation

Thorin McGee

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Thorin McGee