AI Bias

“100% of organizations will be using AI by 2025,” Forrester estimates. One of the benefits of AI is that it can hopefully contain less bias than humans and none at all if programmed correctly. However, it will depend on who programs the machine learning. Humans are the ones who choose what data that the algorithms use and how the results are applied. It will require many tests from many different individuals in order to avoid unconscious biases. But what are some proper steps that programmers can take to avoid these biases? First, educate all staff on responsible AI. Second, let your audience know what you’re doing and be transparent with how your AI algorithms work to make predictions. Lastly, have a team on deck to do damage control if your audience feels that they have been unjustly treated due to AI bias. Here are some other ways to prevent AI bias:

1.     Use synthetic data sets: the data from the real world can be very bias. This helps prevent that issue through using statistically representative versions of real sets.

2.     Test and test and test: make sure to test models before and after. As we said above, the more eyes on these tests the better.

3.     Create an industry standard for AI: have regulations and rules to creating AI algorithms. We think that some point in the near future there will be legislation implemented across the U.S. in order to keep AI in check. Until then, create a standard within your company that prevents AI bias as much as possible.

AI has some impressive potential, such as helping diagnose breast cancer & other diseases earlier. It will also help in processing loan application in banking, chatbots for any website, it will be utilized in real estate to analyze markets, property prices etc., and this list could go on forever. That being said though, it will be extremely important to prevent AI biases in algorithms because there are serious implications if not. It has the potential to harm people through deepening systemic racism, sexism, etc. Some are promoting socio-technical solutions that take into consideration social impacts of bias as well as technical. Since bias can harm humans, such as affecting whether they get a home loan or acceptance into a school, it’s important to program in the societal and systemic impacts that biases can have. We couldn’t agree more with this strategy. Although we still have a long road ahead of us, we’re confident that our country will do its best to regulate AI in the coming years.  

AI Ethics

Artificial intelligence has been a hot button topic for a while now. We’ve written a few articles on it and where we think it’s going. We can tell you that our inboxes are flooded with blogs and news on the topic every day to the point it’s getting a little annoying. That being said, we don’t think AI is going anywhere. In fact, it’s probably just getting started. While we hope it doesn’t take jobs and is used as an added tool in the arsenal for employees, we can’t say for sure how it will pan out. One area of interest when discussing AI is the ethics. As humans, we have cognitive bias from our life experiences, whether we realize them or not. We’d like to think that because AI is machine learning it does not have those biases and that’s what makes it more efficient. However, we must remember that humans program the machine and therefore, must follow certain rules and regulations in order to not infringe upon human rights & civil liberties. The academic community has come up with The Belmont Report as a guide for algorithmic development & experiment.

1.     Respect for persons: this focuses on consent and autonomy of individuals to protect them.

2.     Beneficence: similar to healthcare ethics “do no harm” in order to keep AI algorithms from amplifying biases from race, gender, etc.

3.     Justice: fairness and equality of who reaps the benefits of machine learning.

a.     Equal share

b.     Individual need

c.     Individual effort

d.     Societal contribution

e.     Merit

There are a few hot issues with AI ethics for now. They include:

1.     Impact on jobs: we touched on this above but it happens every time some new tech comes out that will vastly change our lives. We think that roles will shift but not be taken over. There will need to be people who oversee the AI and all the duties it performs. Therefore, one job may turn into another but not disappear altogether.

2.     Bias & discrimination: this has happened in the past with AI when training data leads to biases. It’s important, as we stated above, to program the system to be unbiased and not discriminatory. Although difficult, crucial and may take years to refine.

3.     Privacy: this is an issue now as it is with the digital world we live in and 3rd party cookies. States are coming up with new laws to protect user data but how will AI deal with personal data? Most users don’t even know that their data is being used to make decisions that may affect them. The answer has yet to be seen.

4.     Accountability: there aren’t any legislations yet to control AI practices since it’s so new. This is why ethical guidelines have been created but there needs to be some sort of repercussions for unethical uses. We see this coming into play in the coming years as AI advances.

5.     Singularity: think Class of 09’ on Hulu. The scary thought that AI will surpass humans and develop its own thoughts and ideas.

Ethical issues can create problems for businesses, such as legal issues, brand damage, product failures and, in turn, loss of revenue. Understanding AI will be important for everyone in the near future if not already. AI ethics are being taught in some high schools and middle schools for the next generations in order to keep it in check.  No brand wants to be the one that accidentally puts out machine learning that is discriminatory or get sued for copyright infringements. In the next few years it will be a balancing act to create the best practices and laws as artificial intelligence grows at a rapid rate.

How AI Will Affect SEO

AI seems a bit scary but it will come with some benefits and trust us when we say it will come. People are already utilizing artificial intelligence in advertising and marketing. It’s pretty much inevitable that it will become part of our daily lives in the not so distant future. So, with that, how will it affect SEO? This is what we found.

1.     Better user experience: improved personalized content and quality of interactions

2.     Voice search optimization: with Siri, Alexa and Google Home voice search has improved

3.     Greater understanding of language: provides more accurate answers to user questions

4.     Accuracy: because AI can analyze massive amounts of data at once it makes it easier for search engines to provide precise results.

As uncomfortable as it may be for some, AI isn’t going anywhere. In fact, chances are we’re just getting started. Sometimes if you can’t beat em’, join em’. AI can provide benefits for business other than a positive tool for SEO performance.

AI in Advertising

A.I. is all the fuss right now in the advertising community. It’s got a lot of people up in arms who are against it  and those who are pro artificial intelligence for advertising, are shouting to the rooftops why it’s a good thing. As with most things, there are positive and negative aspects to this topic. So, in order to understand this more we took a deep dive into Artificial Intelligence in advertising. It seems there are a lot of benefits to using AI in advertising but with even more drawbacks. In this article we won’t take a stance on it just yet. We feel there is much more research to be done in order to completely understand how AI will affect the industry. However, we want to leave you with a pros and cons list so that you can start to make your own viewpoint.

PROS of AI:

1.     It can allocate advertising budgets

2.     It can execute programmatic ad strategies

3.     It can compute vast amounts of data to determine trends for writing, understand your audiences on a deeper level and create personalized messaging.

4.      Predict emotional response from campaigns in testing before they go live

CONS of AI

1.     You will need a lot of data

2.     People can end up relying on it too much

3.     It can replace some jobs and increase unemployment

4.     It has a large carbon footprint

5.     It can misappropriate use of IP

6.     It can land you into to hot water when it comes to the IP point

There are so many more pros and cons to using artificial intelligence in advertising and marketing. In short, we think it’s a bit too new to do a deep dive. This is just a starting point. It’s hard to say whether the pros will outweigh the cons and vice versa so we hope you do sufficient research to form your own opinions on the matter. We’ll be watching the space closely.

Artificial Intelligence & Marketing

Well everyone, it seems that the future is here. No flying cars just yet but that doesn’t change the fact that artificial intelligence has now become a part of marketing. Strange times we live in, now right?! Seriously though, AI is becoming more important for the improvement of marketing and real-time engagement. Think about the chat box that helps you when you have a question on a website. This is AI but this isn’t all it’s doing now. Now it’s helping brands predict future behavior. But how does it do that. Well, AI creates real time models by using algorithms from reading data on recent trends on the internet. It also helps predict patterns this way through huge amounts of data to see consumer behaviors as well as their interests. It does so with a data analytics system that operates in real-time as well. Blowing our minds over here! This brings us to the last point of pattern recognition. It uses the data about demographics, browsing behaviors and purchases. It can group people into segments that tend to have similar behaviors.

To be honest AI sounds scary. We all go to that place in Terminator where the machines have taken over but once you begin to understand the benefits and how it truly works it seems a whole lot less scary. We found this information to be very useful and are intrigued on how it can propel the marketing industry in the future. To read more on how AI is changing the industry check out this Quantcast blog that dives a little deeper than we did.