Category: Digital

Why are you so scared of AI?

The word 'intelligence' chiselled into a boulder
CC image via flickr: David Bruce

You could be forgiven for thinking we currently live in an Issac Asimov-inspired world, given the recent headlines about how artificial intelligence (AI) is going to take over your job.

And, it’s true that some jobs will be replaced by new technology – but that’s nothing new. For centuries, something else has arrived and upset the existing order.

I’m not even talking about the past 50 years – do you think the invention of the spinning jenny in the 18th century was greeted warmly by those who were manually employed to spin cotton?

I work in an industry where, theoretically, I should be worried this time. The arrival of ChatGPT seems to spell the death knell for people who play with words for a living. After all, enter the prompt: “write a 500-word blog post about the threat of artificial intelligence to those working in the creative industries” and it spits out a coherent, fairly well-written piece. Continue reading “Why are you so scared of AI?”

Is personalisation really any good?

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A tweet in my time line caught my eye last week. Someone I follow was calling out Sainsbury’s for giving her an offer for pork sausages, despite her having bought kosher margarine recently.

What surprised me more was Sainsbury’s explanation.

Their claim that vouchers are generated randomly smelt distinctively of the horseshit variety.

Holy grail

The holy grail of modern marketing is being able to send such hyper-targeted communications and offers to customers that they continually return to your brand on a never-ending, subliminal journey of discovery and purchase.

The reality – as the above example shows – is somewhat different. Continue reading “Is personalisation really any good?”

MadMinds Europe 2016: Digital is hard, but fun

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I’ve just spent a couple of days at the MadMinds Europe 2016 conference, where I spoke, but also listened to some excellent presentations and people about their successes and frustrations.

Here are 6 insights I gleaned from the 2 days…

1. Digital is blooming hard work

There’s occasionally the external perception that when someone launches something new,  or even creates a new app, that it took just a few weeks.

In fact, I still hear surprise from non-digital folks that you can’t just ‘knock up a new microsite’ in a couple of weeks, much less whether it’s even the right idea.

Continue reading “MadMinds Europe 2016: Digital is hard, but fun”