Written by “…your scientists were so preoccupied with whether or not they could, that they didn’t stop to think if they should.”
Dr. Ian Malcolm (Jurassic Park, 1993)
We’re in a technical revolution, moving at a truly unprecedented pace. From the internet, the dot com bubble, to interwebs 2.0 and the metaverse, we live in a reality foretold by science fiction.
Whether it’s bringing back extinct animals via modified DNA for paying customers in Jurassic Park (the Woolly Mammoth is on the verge of making a comeback), the warning of overconsumption and reliance on technology from Pixar’s compacting yellow robot to the rise of the machines led by Skynet, we have been warned.
And as we continue our journey through this era, we’ve added a new acronym to the ever-growing buzzword bollocks – A.I. Artificial Intelligence.
Perhaps it was a purposeful omen that Schwarzenegger’s Terminator was released in 1984, as George Orwell had already warned us that totalitarian regimes were rising (Orwell, 1949). But it’s not the governments we need to be aware of, the tech giants are the real ‘big brother’.
As the eco-system era continues to emerge, it’s not just the tracking and algorithmic distortion we have to be cautious of, the transition of Bard to Gemini and the generative A.I. apps such as ChatGPT have created a new existential crisis for those in the marketing game.
You’re either excited by A.I. or prepared to join the picket line with the ‘they took ‘er jobs’ signs. And while I’ll be first to critique the very integrity and capability of some recruiters, I do find myself feeling sorry for them. After all, it’s getting harder to work out those who actually have marketing talent and those who are regurgitating responses from ChatGPT.
Especially as the ‘Growth Hackers’ have taken a new form, advising naïve job seekers how to ‘game’ the system of using A.I. to generate CVs and company references (tip: make sure you remove “ChatGPT Examples” from your copied responses – makes it easier for the hiring manager to ignore).
Who knows what’s real anymore?
And that’s the genesis of this rant. Because we’ve entered a phase in our technological existence where it’s no longer a question of whether we can, it’s whether we should.
A.I. will benefit marketing
Let’s start with the positive for a change. A.I. will benefit marketing.
It will require new skills and up the marketing skillset as we learn to take the base code and shape it into wonderous chatbots (make of this what you will), automation opportunities and new ways of working.
We’ve seen the benefits A.I. has had in the medical professions of enabling better diagnosis and treatment or attempting to make travel safer with autonomous vehicles.
For marketers, we’ll be able to use A.I. to scale ‘big data’ into something that’s actually useful insight. After all, data is the new oil, if you know how to refine it. Most don’t even know what questions need answering. That’s where A.I. can be our hero.
A.I. can automate monotonous tasks, helping us to configure and connect systems seamlessly, enabling better integrations and mitigating the reasons why digital transformations fail.
Heck, through the power of generative A.I. we can create images, videos, sounds, music, Google Ads, metadata, and other ‘back-end’ content within seconds, rather than draining the precious time we have left on this Earth.
It will be our saviour. It will be our sense-maker.
We can use A.I. to give us examples of work we need to create or shape our thinking like the informative friend we all desperately seek.
A blank page doesn’t always spark the creative flame.
But as with everything there are trade-offs. Those wanting to position marketing as the ‘purposeful’ department rather than a core business function, risk exposing themselves as irrelevant and giving a reason for replacement by the very technology they’re giddy over.
A.I. will devalue marketing
Now we come to the reality check. We’ve made our bed and now we’re lying in it.
The ‘marketeers’ have taken over from the marketers, with those shouting the loudest being heard and accepted, positioning marketing as the colour and words department and putting the nails into all of our coffins.
After all, if A.I. can produce the colours and words, why pay us to do it?
The discourse on what marketing is will forever be debated. You’re either on the side of quoting the same frameworks like they’re the gospel with no experience of actually applying them, or on the side of ‘vibe’ with the latest meme trend proclaiming, ‘this is marketing’.
Either way, perceptions matter. And while the ‘Ps’ might be a dry topic, only ever talking about the promotional one means we’ve left ourselves vulnerable.
The structure of the business shapes the function of marketing (Senge, 2006), and we’re now at the edge of an abyss where we’re risking not just having our work trivialised and misunderstood, but totally devalued and misunderstood.
We’ll be facing the infamous value question – why pay for ‘expertise’ when A.I. can do it for me?’ Asks the uninitiated.
So, prepare to fight for lower wages and higher expectations of what ‘marketing’ should do as we fight for the scraps that come our way.
We’ve already seen it with the ‘quality’ of materials and content on social heading into a downward spiral.
Before it was regurgitated Linkediner shit, now it’s not even generated by a LinkedIner wannabe – it’s A.I. shit.
Even those replying in the comment section don’t have to think about their shitty response, A.I. can write it for them, giving them the path to thought leadership success so they can take their rightful place on the great pretentious pedestal on LinkedIn.
Spare a moment for the ghostwriters. They’ll soon be put out of work.
More automation means fewer jobs
With any automation comes risks to the job market. It may seem backwards, but inefficiency creates employment. The more automated a business becomes, the fewer people are needed to do the work.
Of course, innovation brings new job opportunities, but how many people are now needed to oversee the checkout counters at your local supermarket? The machines do the rest. Amazon’s fresh venture showed the creepy future that’ll soon be upon us.
Even governments are recognising this trend and potential implications of having to completely rethink the global economic structure, with the European parliament noting:
“However, AI may also have a highly disruptive effect on the economy and society. Some warn that it could lead to the creation of super firms – hubs of wealth and knowledge – that could have detrimental effects on the wider economy. It may also widen the gap between developed and developing countries, and boost the need for workers with certain skills while rendering others redundant; this latter trend could have far-reaching consequences for the labour market. Experts also warn of its potential to increase inequality, push down wages and shrink the tax base.”
(Source: European Parliament)
There can only be so many entrepreneurs before you run out of people to sell to.
Let’s not forget about the environmental impact of A.I.
Don’t let the ‘greenwashing’ blind you. The move to expand A.I. power will mean more data centres are needed, adding to the already fragile state of our climate. The stress and strain on our precious resources. It’s not just the power from the socket to the plug, it’s the natural resources sacrificed to build the data centres. There’s a reason since the dot com boom we’re breaking climate records daily.
For every action, there’s a reaction and the consequences of our actions are becoming ever more apparent. But hey, that’s for the next generation to deal with, right?
The rise of A.I. will undoubtedly lead us to explore much wider macro- and social-economic questions that many are either too ignorant or unable to comprehend. It’s not just about productivity.
With A.I. there can be no trust
But the greatest challenge we face, especially in the immediate, isn’t whether we’ll need to learn how to live off the grid and start growing our own potatoes, it’s whether we’re even engaging with a human in the first place.
Who knows if the content we’re consuming or the people we talk to online are even real?
Creating deep fakes might be funny with our friends, but it’ll empower your enemies and warp your perceptions.
Channel 4’s Dispatches programme ‘Can A.I. steal your vote?’ demonstrated just how influential and “scary’” A.I. manipulation can be.
The gap between innocently asking A.I. to create a country song or convince your mates you’ve been able to grow your hair back, to engaging in questionable ethics by asking it to do the work for you or generate ‘fake news’ is narrowing. We’re already on the slippery slope.
Trust is a rare commodity and in the Wild West of social media, ‘Nothing is true. Everything is permitted’ (Assassin’s Creed).
But I will argue, the technology itself isn’t the problem. It’s the people using the technology that are the problem.
The need to understand how things work in the digital realm is greater than ever. Even more so than having a ‘Prompt Engineer’ in your marketing arsenal.
Continuing on this trend, it won’t be long before A.I. will be fully powered by its own presence with no one able to police it and its final form becoming even more monstrous.
We’ll be voluntarily enslaved to believe what our preferred technological overlords’ A.I. tells us, having been brainwashed to continue to engage in their eco-systems about wanting ‘truth’ and ‘free speech’, but cancelling anyone that dares question our distorted view of the world.
A.I. is a tool as much as it is a weapon.
Take note, Pixar warned us. Wall-E was a glimpse into a world we’re heading into, derived through overconsumption and overreliance on technology.
A.I. will make us lazy. Not just physically, but in critiquing of thought. Governed by the content we consume and bound not to challenge our own thinking, as we become reliant on A.I. to do the thinking for us.
And as the narrative of our digital lives mattering more than our real ones grows (what a depressing thought), we’re already living in the 1984 dystopia Orwell warned us about.
However, we’ll only realise that when A.I. tells us. After all, artificial intelligence is making actual intelligence, artificial.
Share your thoughts
Do you think the A.I. overlords will benefit all mankind, or do you think we’re heading towards a war with the Terminator? Let me know in the comments below, contact me, or reach out on the socials, @CJPanteny.
Disclaimer: No A.I. was used in the creation of this rant.
References
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Carl Panteny 