For the most assiduous readers of American blogs, the quantity of articles on artificial intelligence that have been written in recent months cannot but surprise. From medicine to automotive. From robotics to science. A continuous bombardment of ideas, hopes and realities.
Also Wired in its winter episode he dedicated the main articles to him.
Among the most interesting in my opinion, those obtainable from the double interview on the subject with Barack Obama and Joe Ito, Director of the MIT Media Lab "Yes, we still can: there is a future full of hope and imagination":
"AI is not a simple problem of computer science but of extended intelligence: how we build the social values that regulate it"
quote by Joi Ito from Wired
Meanwhile, let's get on the topic. For AI we are talking about cars that drive themselves, trained robots that operate on human patients, chats with virtual operators who talk to us, virtual domestic assistants, virtual shopkeepers and sales assistants, robot astronauts ready to set sail to discover the deep space where no man has ever reached before and where no mortal man will ever reach (planets thousands of light years away).
“If the car is going to drive, will it swerve to avoid a pedestrian even though it will then crash into a wall and cause your death? the decision is moral, who will make it?”
quote by Joi Ito from Wired
The theme and its applications are still very articulated and contested, it will be necessary to build social and moral values within it, but AI risks becoming the next catchphrase also for marketing, electing itself as the topic trend of 2017. The starting point in this case becomes the Bots and the whole world of Automation with an arrival point to be discovered.
In between, the main Visionaries of our world take the floor, from Tesla's Elon Musk to Zuckerberg, from Bill Gates to Joi Ito and Brian Solis describing a future that is already present but in a beta version, always defined by Tesla as a phase in which one does not want to run the risk of falling into self-satisfaction to explain that it will continue to improve. The certainties about its functioning and its compatibility with the human world also open up social, economic and civil issues, but delaying it out of fear would be morally reprehensible and intellectually dishonest. Thus a hybrid era seems to be opening up, a little human and a little robotic during which it will take a lot of practice.
THE BOTS
There have always been, since I was programming, special software that carried out automatic procedures, as if they were human operators to all intents and purposes, when particular conditions occurred. Today, obviously evolved, they take on forms of social interest such as Chat-Bots, software which within Facebook Messenger, Kik, Telegram allow you to create chats with virtual operators who assist us by answering our questions. Obviously they try, the road is long and we have already touched it closely with Crab e Cortana. But the opportunity that opens up is immense. Let's think, for example, of all those questions we ask a call center and how many are attributable to personalized but robotizable answers: what are the opening hours of the shop in Corso Napoleone?, are you also open on Sundays?, where can I find the latest Class A brochure? , where can I buy the yellow IPad Pro 2016 case?, is my UGCNDY plane on time?
The most famous to try are Anna by IKEA, 1-800-Flowers.com to order plants online (USA), Kit Shopify's virtual assistant, Book by Sephora, Kip by Macy, the Boots of H&M on Kik, soon Booking.com and Expedia, the Bot-Amex of American Express, the Boots by CNN. Most of these have been developed for Facebook Messenger, Kik and Telegram but some are starting to be compatible with virtual assistants, for example with Amazon Echo. From Wired BOT inventor and futurist Kurzweil reveals “Interesting conversations may also be had very soon: one of the bots in the works, which should be ready by the end of the year, will be called Danielle. Bots, to acquire personality, must "ingest" large amounts of text, explains the futurist. Each could have one with its own characteristics, if he feeds it large amounts of text from his blog, for example. ”.
MARKETING AUTOMATION
With the term Marketing Automation we are referring to a software that allows you to automate some repetitive marketing activities. AI in the evolutionary process of Automation software represents an important turning point. First of all, Automation is becoming a science, albeit still unexplored and young, but the opportunity to integrate its processes with advanced artificial intelligence tools is already proving to be an important resource.
I don't know how many of you have used the IF/THEN system by IFTTT but its basic principle is the one on which the main Marketing Automation software works and this algorithm already seems not to be enough. Predictive analyzes on Big Data, crossed with Digital Customer Experience (DXM) and Customer Segmentation represent the ingredients of an advanced Marketing Automation system. Too complicated right? Perhaps still too far from our needs? so I thought I'd leave you with some ideas to allow you to start this interesting exploration.
Let's start with IFTTT. Would you like a system that automatically publishes your Instagram posts as native tweets/photos on Twitter? Nothing easier, connect to this site and click on "Turn On", enter your instagram and twitter account and you're done. If you want to receive the weather forecast every morning, click , promising. You want to turn on your smartphone's WiFi automatically as soon as you enter the house, that's it , promising. Or do you want to turn it off when you leave the house, , promising. Well, there's everything. And all of this is based on the IF/THEN concept.
Approaching Automation, we must try to practice with for example MailChimp. Do you want to send Welcome emails automatically? or, do you have an ecommerce and want to send an email to those who abandon their cart? again, do you want to send a particular email if your users visit a page on your site? you can do all this by integrating MailChimp with your site, quickly and easily. It costs, but little. AND , promising you can find out everything.
But Marketing Automation is already more. The goal is to nurture and convert leads. We work on more or less complex Sales Funnels, depending on the Customer Journey. For example, I started using Eloquent of Oracle for a customer. It is an Enterprise software, positioned by Gartner among visionary leaders. Certainly not within everyone's reach but extremely powerful and flexible. I can design highly articulated flows and program dynamic and personalized communications. Users who have visited a section of the site receive email A. If they do not view it within 5 days, they receive email B. If they view email B and click the call to action link, they visit the section of the site without interacting , they receive email C after 2 days. If all this has not triggered any results, we send the recovery email D. Amazon is considered a best-in-class example among Marketing Automation Business Designers and Analysts. Have you ever left a product in your cart and received at least four emails with offers, promotions and special purchase conditions in two weeks? Behind all this there is an articulated Marketing Automation software. What if the flows were based on predictive analyzes capable of anticipating your actions on a statistical and customer segmentation basis? tomorrow an advanced AI could even call you or send you a Whatsap message and offer you an offer. Welcome AI!
Until next time ...
