An enduring factor or a passing fad? We asked some honored laborers in the marketing tech trenches to give us their thoughts on some of the buzzwords (and phrases) of 2016. Let’s play Holiday Buzz or Bust: Artificial Intelligence.
Kevin Gavin (CMO at Five9): Next year the use of Artificial Intelligence will continue to rise and we’ll see an increase in its potential to make our everyday lives easier. Machines will continue to learn patterns and provide answers to help eliminate some of our mundane tasks, and intelligent machine personas like the Alexa in Amazon Echo and Siri in Apple devices, are paving the way for natural language processing (NLP). However, in the customer service industry in particular, at the end of the day customers will still seek the human touch when getting complex issues and questions resolved because AI will never be able to replace the empathy that a real person can provide.
Daniel Incandela (SVP Global Marketing at ReturnPath): The future of all enterprise processes will be driven by Artificial Intelligence, which requires the highest quality of data to be successful. AI is where all business processes are headed; however, with the recent push of AI technology advancements for businesses – many companies have not addressed how they will ensure that the data their AI models are built on is high quality. Data quality is key to pulling accurate insights and actions and in 2017, we will see more companies focus on solving the challenge of maintaining accurate, valuable data, so that AI technology lives up to its promise of driving change and improvement for businesses.
Peter Isaacson (CMO at Demandbase): Next year, Artificial Intelligence will allow B2B marketers to tap into more data and understand the entire business network of a company from customers, partners, suppliers and more. This complete 360-degree view will allow marketers to better predict potential buyers, personalize campaigns and close more deals, further extending the value of marketing in the C-suite
Oren Jacob (co-founder and CEO at PullString): Artificial Intelligence is overhyped when discussed as a general concept, but it will continue to be very real in an applied sense. The technology is rapidly expanding into many new areas that will help humans make better decisions in countless ways. AI will be specifically useful to those in marketing, as it opens up the opportunity for brands to build complex and interactive text/voice conversations through a carefully crafted combination of technology and design.
David Panek (SVP of marketing at Aprimo): The evolution of Artificial Intelligence technology is clearly underway for marketing organizations in 2017, but we won’t see this trend truly come to fruition until 2018-2020. Within the next year, the biggest impact of AI will move deeper into the role of marketers, allowing them to leverage the abundance of data to uncover hidden opportunities to better communicate with customers throughout the dynamic buyers’ journey—and deliver those experiences in a smarter, faster way, and in the right context.
Darian Shirazi (CEO at Radius): The future of all enterprise processes will be driven by Artificial Intelligence, which requires the highest quality of data to be successful. AI is where all business processes are headed; however, with the recent push of AI technology advancements for businesses – many companies have not addressed how they will ensure that the data their AI models are built on is high quality. Data quality is key to pulling accurate insights and actions and in 2017, we will see more companies focus on solving the challenge of maintaining accurate, valuable data, so that AI technology lives up to its promise of driving change and improvement for businesses.
Justin Shriber (head of marketing at LinkedIn Sales Solutions): Artificial Intelligence has enormous potential but these are early days. AI isn’t ready yet to take on most of the human elements of what marketers do. In addition, there’s lots of unstructured data locked in tools like Evernote that AI can’t act upon yet. However, next year more people will start using AI to automate administrative tasks such as scheduling and light communications.
Verdict: The buzz will continue in 2017 and beyond.
