Artificial Intelligence and the Social Network

An interesting interview at the 2010 web 2.0 summit with Digital Sky Technologies CEO Yuri Milner, underlined a potential game changing factor that would revolutionize the way we perceive social networks within the upcoming decade. Towards the middle of the interview, Milner talks about Facebook having all the necessary ingredients to transform from the social platform – as we know it today – into an artificially intelligent network learning and influencing billions of people simultaneously.

Naturally, the emergence of AI in the social network would give birth to a new digital marketing spectrum and put forward yet another set of challenges before creative strategists.

“Is it possible that one day, marketing strategies will be computed and presented to the client by the medium itself? Are great marketing minds going to be replaced by data crunching super processors? Are marketing firms going to become obsolete?”

There’s no need to panic just yet. On the contrary, evolution shows us that human beings are selfish enough to make sure that artificial intelligence remains confined within the algorithms of subordinate machines, computing in favor of human supremacy.

In fact, AI in the future will present marketing specialists with unprecedented data about consumer behavior, in addition to a platform that will allow for simulation of strategic plans and the test-driving of experimental marketing ideas without the need to spend a dime and risk a campaign flop.

How will it work? Well, it’s quite simple. Super machines will compute endless numbers and parameters in order to filter and customize information that would normally take a human many years to accomplish. Putting all this in a marketing perspective, super machines will give marketing specialists accurate data on consumer behavior and will compute the outcome of a proposed strategy forecasting whether or not it will achieve its objective. Imagine having that entire arsenal during a client’s pitch: How much time and energy would you save trying to convince that client to opt for your ideas?

We would be interested to hear about your input on AI, share with us your thoughts on the matter and leave us a comment.

2 replies
  1. Darine Sabbagh
    Darine Sabbagh says:

    This year, a lot of football fans were pissed off as coaches were planning their game tactics based on a software rather than their coaching guts, fans felt cheated, they felt that the games were not as interesting and not as colorful.Whilst AI can calculate the reach, scope or campaigns and propose target audience with all the information that it has, it can never give us the formula for engagement and creativity which are by far the most important and mysterious elements in advertising… esp. online advertising. At least this is what i think 🙂
    Lovely post you guys!

    Reply

Leave a Reply

Want to join the discussion?
Feel free to contribute!

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *