Gearing up for digital transformation

It’s the time of year when we’re gearing up for the spring forward (March 10). As we get set to advance our clocks, we should also be thinking about how we can advance our businesses on the road of digital transformation. That calls for making the necessary shifts in a technology portfolio to embrace the game changers, especially the ones that deliver on customer analytics.

Read more in Time to rebalance your technology portfolio for digital transformation

11 Takes on AI

Takeaway: The advance of AI is inevitable, and what that translates into for humanity is not altogether clear. Some believe we can look forward to a great future, while others think it means we are on the path to being supplanted by our robotic overlords. The third perspective is one that is aware of risks but considers them to be manageable.

We hear a lot about AI and its transformative potential. What that means for the future of humanity, however, is not altogether clear. Some futurists believe life will be improved, while others think it is under serious threat. There’s also a spectrum of positions in the middle. Here’s a range of takes from 11 experts.

Here's the first 

That is the first sentence in Yudkowsy’s 2002 report entitled “Artificial Intelligence as a Positive and Negative Factor in Global Risk” for the Machine Intelligence Research Institute (MIRI). While the term AI wasn’t bandied about nearly as much then as it is now, there still remains a problem of a lack of understanding on the capabilities and limits of the technology. In fact, in the past couple of years, there’s been more of a push to make AI not just understandable, but explainable.

And we'll jump to the last one: “There is no reason and no way that a human mind can keep up with an artificial Intelligent machine by 2035.” – Gray Scott

This quote is not mistyped, though it deviates from the way you will see it anywhere else online because it always appears as “There is no reason and no way that a human mind can keep up with an artificial intelligence machine by 2035.” Here’s the story. Based on how far back it appears in digital sources, it was likely said in 2015. However, I could not pin it down to any particular context even after hours of search through texts and videos from that period. So I contacted Scott himself to ask for the source. He admitted, “I do not recall when the first time was that I said this or where it was.” But he did recall his wording: “The quote has always been wrong. It should read ‘artificial Intelligent.’”

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To read the other nine, click on 11 Quotes About AI That'll Make You Think

eBook on AutoML

 AI can enable marketers to deliver on those expectations because it can anticipate not just what customers would want to hear about but when and how they’d want to receive that communication. “With AI, such personalization can now be achieved with previously unimaginable precision and at vast scale,” insists H. James Wilson and Paul R. Daugherty. The company that does that for music is Pandora. Delivering personalized music selections involves “billions of data points that are tracked across dozens of systems, including media servers, device clients, and ad servers.” To keep all that running smoothly, it needs to detect and address anomalies as they occur. It’s a tall order that is answered with an ML system with the capability to do just that in near real-time, something Pandora will also draw on in assuring its ads are performing as expected.

Read more in my eBook: 2019: the year AutoML takes off

The essential partnership: CIO and CMO

As Henry David Thoreau said, "If you have built castles in the air, your work need not be lost; that is where they should be. Now put the foundations under them.” The partnership allows the CMO to plan the castles in the air and work with the CIO to set up their foundations.

Read more in The CIO and CMO are natural partners: here's why

Related post: https://www.zylotech.com/blog/who-controls-the-marketing-stack-in-2019-the-cio-or-the-cmo

Wearables Pose Security Risks

Takeaway: Thanks to the advance of IoT, the market for wearables keeps expanding to the point that it should hit 50 billion devices by 2020. While these devices offer hands-free convenience for specific functions, they also introduce new points of vulnerability that can be opportunities for hackers.

Cisco predicted that by the year 2020, 50 billion new wearable devices will be connected through the IoT. This increases points of connection exponentially, and that translates into a huge opportunity for hackers.

Demonstrated Hacks

That wearable devices like Fitbits can be be manipulated through acoustic interference was demonstrated by a number of research experiments. It’s true that there are no immediate ramifications of a nefarious nature other than possibly gaming the count of one’s steps, but the researchers do warn of this: “For instance, should one trust the step count from a Fitbit as evidence for an alibi?” How can it be relied upon if it’s possible to inflate the number of steps through a hack?

This is a question of reliable accuracy, but sometimes it is the accuracy itself that poses a problem. Wearables might be picking up accurate information that is traced directly to the individual and so reveal quite a lot.

Read more in Hacking Wearable Tech: The Potential Danger of Advancing Wearable Technology

Riding the rails with social media

So many brands have jumped on the bandwagon of influencer marketing that it may be losing all association with originality and authenticity. So when Amtrak decided on an angle for reach through social media, it went about it differently. Its goal was to work off people whose social reach run deep rather than merely wide. 

Late in 2018, Amtrak launched its #AmtrakTakeMeThere Social Media Residency Program. It’s intended to showcase the diversity of the trains’ riders by following the stories of individuals who offer a unique perspective on travel. Applicants will be assessed on the basis of their writing skills, photography and videography skills, social community engagement' and online personality.    

Those selected to represent the Amtrak brand get a free round-trip as Sleeper Service passengers. That means they get the kind of amenities one does in a full-service hotel, like meals, bottled water, linens, and a travel allowance up to a thousand dollars.   

Olivia Irvin, Amtrak’s public relations manager shared some insight into what prompted this direction for the brand. She explained, “Today’s market has become saturated with 'influencers' who seem more like ad units than actual people. We don’t want that disconnect — we want stories that resonate.” 

Read more in 

All Aboard for a New Amtrak Platform

Women speak

photo from
https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/2/25/Podcast_hosted_by_women.jpg

Podcasts, which are becoming increasingly important as a journalistic medium,  have generally been male-dominated. But the medium is getting more diverse, thanks in part to a new podcasting studio dedicated to giving women a voice.

Raina Penchansky, founder and CEO of Digital Brand Architects, (DBA), a digital talent management and social media marketing firm, spoke to me about her company’s latest endeavor, the recently launched  Dear Media (DM). Located in West Hollywood, this new podcasting studio focuses on leading female voices and narratives that can now be heard on Apple iTunes and Spotify. .

They reach a “highly engaged listener,” through this medium Penchansky explained.  “It’s a targeted millenial audience, and in a lot of ways,” which makes it “very much the right medium” for this demographic that has been “cord-cutting and consuming content differently” than the previous generation. 

The business model for  Dear Media follows the pattern set by DBA back in 2010. It  helps individuals conceptualize, develop, and produce customized communication through new media. The difference is that it puts the emphasis on female hosts and voices, placing women and their stories at the forefront of conversation.

Read more in Giving Women a Voice