#166: Demystifying Machine Learning: What Does AI Really Mean?
AI is a broad field of computer science that consists of the study, design, development, and application of intelligent systems. It focuses on replicating human intelligence through machines with algorithms to create autonomous systems capable of rational decision-making. AI has opened up numerous opportunities for businesses, governments, and individuals to improve their operations by taking advantage of the benefits artificial intelligence offers – from automation to increased efficiency and accuracy.
Types of Artificial Intelligence
1. Weak AI (or Narrow AI)
Weak AI is focused on solving specific problems within its domain or area of expertise. This type of AI requires intensive training as it typically uses supervised learning techniques to learn from data and can only answer questions within its pre-defined parameters. Examples of weak AI include virtual assistants, such as Amazon Alexa or Apple’s Siri, as well as driverless cars and other pieces of technology.
2. Strong AI (or Artificial General Intelligence)
Strong AI is focused on replicating human intelligence across multiple domains. It uses techniques such as unsupervised learning to generalize knowledge from data and attempt to solve problems outside its area of expertise. While this type of AI is still in its infancy, experts in the field are actively seeking ways to develop it further so that machines can attain true general intelligence.
3. Super AI (or Artificial Superintelligence)
Super AI refers to a hypothetical form of AI that is far more intelligent than any human. It’s believed to be able to learn and adapt at a much faster rate than humans, leading to exponential growth in its capabilities. While this type of AI has not yet been achieved, some experts believe it may become a reality within the next few decades.
Applications of Artificial Intelligence
• Automation: AI can automate repetitive tasks, freeing up employees’ time for higher-value activities. This allows companies to reduce costs while increasing efficiency and accuracy.
• Business Analytics: AI can be used by businesses to gain insight into customer behavior, optimize marketing campaigns, and improve product offerings.
• Healthcare: With its ability to diagnose diseases accurately and quickly, AI has the potential to revolutionize the healthcare industry.
• Security: AI-enabled systems can be used to detect suspicious behavior, identify vulnerabilities, and alert authorities in a timely manner.
• Education: AI-powered tools can be used to improve learning outcomes by providing personalized experiences for students.
• Robotics: AI is being utilized to create robots that are capable of performing complex tasks with greater precision and accuracy than humans.
Benefits of Artificial Intelligence
• Reduced costs: Automation enabled by AI eliminates the need for manual labor, resulting in cost savings.
• Increased efficiency: AI-assisted processes allow companies to get the job done faster and more accurately.
• Improved customer service: By leveraging predictive analytics, companies can provide better customer experiences.
• Enhanced decision-making: AI enables more informed decisions by providing data-driven insights.
• Increased safety: AI can help identify potential dangers and alert authorities in a timely manner, thereby reducing the risk of accidents or other harm.
• Greater accuracy: AI systems are able to make fewer errors than humans due to their superior processing power.
• Increased innovation: AI can be used to generate new ideas and develop never-before-seen products or services.
Conclusion
AI is revolutionizing the way businesses, governments, and individuals operate by offering a wide range of benefits – from cost savings and improved customer service to enhanced decision-making and increased safety. While there are still many challenges ahead, it’s clear that AI has already begun to transform our lives in significant ways, with more advancements sure to come in the future. With its potential for exponential growth, AI is set to become an essential part of everyday life. It’s up to us to ensure we make responsible use of this powerful technology so that it serves humanity in the best possible way.
Listen to the Show:
Laura 00:00
Welcome to another exciting episode of the AI-Driven Marketing Show. I'm your host, I'm here to guide you through the fascinating and kind of mind-boggling world of artificial intelligence. And I want to help us begin today's episode with a question, a question that could kind of sound like it's coming out of a science fiction novel, but it's becoming more relevant every single passing day in our reality. What if I told you that there was a form of intelligence that can learn at an unimaginable scale, outperforming the human brain and speed and efficiency and has the ability to predict answers with an uncanny ability? Well, it's not fiction anymore. This form of intelligence is very much part of our world every single day. And it's called artificial intelligence or AI. And it's a term you've likely heard before, but you might not fully understand. So today I'm going to dive into the depths of AI, explore what it really is and demystify its capabilities. So, let's get started.
Laura 01:10
Welcome to the AI-Driven marketing podcast. This is a place where we deliver quick and insightful weekly tips about 10 minutes or less on what's new and groundbreaking in the world of marketing AI. I'm your host, Laura Meyer, a 20 plus year entrepreneur and marketing expert. If you are excited about staying ahead of the curve and harnessing the potential of AI in your marketing strategies, you're in the right place. Let's go.
Laura 01:42
A few weeks ago, I was at a fourth of July party at our country club, and I walked up to a table of people that I played tennis with. And I was curious what their conversation was about a lot of times, it's about what's happening in the tennis world, what is going on at the country club, what's taking place with the Golf Championships, I expected it to be everyday conversation, much like what I often engage in with the group of people that were chatting together. One is a sales leader at a mortgage company. One is a holistic health coach, and one is a dean at a local community college. And what they were talking about was AI. So, many different areas of business and life, but they're all super interested in AI, which was not what I was expecting. I don't really talk about what I do very much within my social circles, the country clubs. So, I kind of assumed that nobody else really wants to hear me geek out about AI and marketing and all things sales funnels. But it really showed me how mainstream AI is becoming and how this is part of the everyday conversations that people are having. And so, they were asking me a little bit more about AI and how it's making a difference in the world. And they asked me some really hard questions that made me think about what does the everyday person who is not hanging around geeing out about AI? What are they thinking about? What are some of their excitements around AI? What are they most excited about? And what do they fear? So now when we talk about AI, what is it that we really mean?
Laura 03:18
So artificial intelligence, or AI can be simply defined as the simulation of human intelligence processes by machines, particularly computer systems, but it's not just about simulating human intelligence, it's about enhancing it, accelerating it and applying it in ways that can augment our capabilities as humans. At the heart of AI is learning and problem solving. And it's about creating machines that can think learn, adapt and solve problems much like a human would. But with a key difference. The speed scale and efficiency that they can achieve that AI can achieve is so much more beyond what a human could hope to match. So, it's not that AI has something that we don't, but it can process information at a faster scale, speed and efficiency than the human brain can. And that's what makes it so powerful. So, as we dive deeper into the world of AI, it's fascinating to trace its evolution. Artificial intelligence as a concept is actually not new. Open AI is new, a lot of the conversations about AI are new, but it's not a new phenomenon. So, it dates back to the mid 20th century when the term coined by John McCarthy during the Dartmouth conference in 1956. The initial years were full of optimism and grand expectations, often referred to as the golden years of AI. However, by the 1970s and 80s progress was slower than anticipated during periods is now known as AI winters were funding an interest in the field just decreased and the turning point came with machine learning in the 90s. And even later deep learning in the 2000s, both of which provided more practical frameworks for building AI systems. And these frameworks leverage the increasing computer power and the explosion of digital data, which enabled AI systems to learn from that data. So now fast forward to today, and AI has made significant strides and what seem to be originally just science fiction.
Laura 05:29
Siri, Alexa and other virtual assistants that are now commonplace and hanging out in our kitchens, they make our lives easier. For some people, it can be a little frustrating, I've definitely told Siri to mind her own business multiple times swinging my kitchen. But for the most part that voice recognition and natural language processing can provide conveniences that many of us didn't have, and that is AI. So, AI in healthcare is assisting early disease detection and personalized treatment plans. Autonomous vehicles, although still in its early stages, is a promise of future self-driving cars. So, these advancements underscore a key point that I really want to make about AI is it's just it's not static. So, it's helpful to remember, this is the dumbest version of AI that we will experience in our lifetime. It's an ever-evolving field. So, nobody's an AI expert. I'm not an AI expert. I just keep up with the evolution, the improvements and the continual learnings, particularly as it applies to marketing, just as humans do, right. But it's again, doing it at a scale and speed that we could never achieve making AI truly transformative. A lot of people want to know, where does AI get all of this information? And is this information safe? Is my data safe? And we don't really know, that's a little bit of the scary part of AI. And I think a lot of people are concerned about it. Where do they get this data?
Laura 07:02
Because AI is rooted in massive amounts of data more than you or I could ever consume within a lifetime. And it can come from a lot of different sources, web browsing history, social media interactions, customer behavior, data, scientific research databases, and it takes all of this data and acquires it from various sources. What AI experts say is that that data has been granted access either directly or indirectly. But then AI takes all of this data sifts through it at an incredible speed, identifying patterns, learning from it, and making predictions or decisions based on it. And so, it has this ability to process this vast amount of data, make sense of it, again, public data, social media posts that are public profiles, and its greatest strength is to synthesize it, it can learn, adapt and predict based on synthesizing, which can be a pretty unnerving to a lot of people, including my fourth of July party friends. But it's important to note that any data utilized by AI systems must adhere to data privacy laws and regulations. Although there is so much misuse of it that's happening in the world. That's why I think it's so important for us to be talking about it and be committed to using it for good.
Laura 08:27
Users, a gain, a lot of times we check that box, unknowingly, we provide consent or for our data to be used. And a lot of us didn't provide that consent with the intention that it would be aggregated by AI. But that's happening more and more. Google just made an update to its privacy policy that if you look closely, it will say that any data that's transferred through Google is now available to the public, and most importantly, to AI for this data synthesizing process. So, in the world of AI, this is really important to understand that it's always processing and interpreting massive amounts of data. And it's kind of like this world's largest library. And combined with social media, post, web browsing history, social media interactions, customer behavior, data, and brings it all together at scale. through machine learning algorithms AI can sift through and make sense of the data in a in a minute. And this is so much faster than what humans can process. So, it's really incredible. And if humans were trying to replicate it, it would be almost impossible. It can scan the entire haystack of data, locate the needle and even tell you it’s exact positions. So, what is this mean? What is artificial intelligence mean?
Laura 09:58
What is this data collection mean? Simply put, AI can make sense of vast amount of information available to us today, anywhere on the internet, anywhere in the universe that we give it access to the data, it finds patterns, makes predictions, and ultimately makes predictive decisions again faster and more efficiently than most humans could on their own. So how does this even apply to marketing? This is a Marketing podcast. And you might be wondering, well, great, it's fantastic to hear about the history of AI or to understand how it actually gets his data and how it synthesizes that data. But here at Joy brand Creative, we are using AI to revolutionize customer interaction, we can handle customer inquiries 24/7. We can book people for appointments, they can troubleshoot problems, provide product recommendations,
and even guide a customer through a sale end to end, all without a human needing to be present. We're also using AI powered sales assistants, which can engage in leads and personalized two-way conversations over email or SMS, qualifying them before they even end up with a human sales rep. So, it's not just even responding to inquiries, it's helping us marketers, and sales people get those products in front of the right customers at the right time. And so, we're even using AI systems to analyze feedback surveys or looking at historical purchase data, and segment those lists based on what a customer is likely to buy next. So, it's kind of like this Supercharged AI powered cross selling machine.
Laura 11:40
So as AI continues to evolve, it'll just get better and better at understanding our needs, preferences and behaviors. It'll become way more integrated in our lives and businesses, improving efficiency, personalization, and ultimately, customer satisfaction. So, the next time that you're interacting with a perfectly timed product recommendation, it is very likely that it's air at work. And it's revolutionizing marketing and sales. Like it or not, it's here to stay. And remember, we're just scratching the surface of its potential. The future of AI is very exciting to somebody like me, who loves technology, and loves seeing continual improvement. And it really holds enormous promise for marketing in the future. So, I really hope this is helpful to you in terms of unpacking what AI is how it learns this vast information of data more efficiently and rapidly than the human brain, and how I'm using in our company AI in the world of marketing and sales. So, it's understanding the basics to witnessing real world applications, it's more than just a buzzword. It is a game changer. So, I want you to think about something we're living in a time when technology is advancing at an unprecedented rate. And if AI could accomplish all that it does now just imagine what the future holds. How will AI continue to revolutionize marketing and sales? And how will it change the way that we live and work? And most importantly, how can you leverage it to drive business growth?
Laura 13:13
If you've been wondering these questions, I have a really simple and easy to follow brand new training on how to get more sales with AI at makemoresaleswithai.com. It can be all lowercase, makemoresaleswithai.com. There you'll find insights strategies and practical tips to implement AI in your sales processes, and take your marketing to the next level. And as always, I want to hear from you. I want to hear your thoughts on this topic, so make sure to share any insights or questions. Remember, the future is AI and it's already here. So it's important to embrace it, learn from it and use it to make a real impact on your business. Thanks so much for tuning in. And I'll catch you in the next episode.
Laura 14:01
Thank you for tuning in to the AI-Driven marketing podcast. Before we wrap up, I just want to remind you that you can learn more about how to make more sales with AI by going to makemoresaleswithai.com. This is where I dive deeper into the AI revolution in marketing with our free training. And if you've enjoyed today's episode, please share it with others who might find it valuable. And if you can also just take a moment to leave us a review I would greatly appreciate it. Your support helps us continue to bring you the top insights in the field of AI driven marketing. Until next time, remember AI is here and it's transforming the marketing landscape. Stay Ahead, stay informed, and most importantly, stay excited. I'll see you soon.
Welcome to the AI-Driven Marketing Podcast! Join host Laura Meyer, a 20+ year veteran entrepreneur and marketing expert, as she unveils the future of marketing that's already at your fingertips. Each episode offers quick, valuable insights, news, and practical tips about how AI is revolutionizing the marketing landscape, shaping how businesses engage with customers, and enhancing marketing strategies. Tune in to stay ahead, informed, and excited about the remarkable opportunities that AI brings to the world of marketing.