Artificial Intelligence (AI) in Action [And a Warning]

AI in Software Development

Artificial intelligence has given a demonstrable advantage to software engineers. Instead of relying on writing extensive code to manipulate data- developers now have the ability to utilize machine learning APIs (Application Programming Interfaces) to send and receive data. By using advanced data processing and getting real-time responses from massive data systems such as Google’s cloud API, far more complex logic can be completed in a fraction of the time. Other examples include Amazon’s SageMaker and TensorFlow.

Working with a new client in the event planning niche, our co-founder and CTO Michael uses AI technology to predict scheduling trends and determine patterns to complete a complex schedule in under 10 minutes. That same combination of tasks and refinement had previously taken a team of three people weeks of tedious work. AI frees those individuals up to work on other tasks. We’re seeing firsthand the power of machine learning and continue to be awed by its power.

AI in Digital Marketing

AI in digital marketing continues to grow more prevalent. Machine learning has enabled ad platforms to predict and successfully make informed decisions on buyer behavior. Thus delivering more targeted ads, and a better ROI for ad dollars spent through the platform. Traditional advertising methodologies such as television, radio or print will struggle to adopt AI as they don’t have the data-driven foundation for AI to continually refine a strategy. 

Digital marketing provides unique insight to experts, as it allows marketers to track conversions, determine a customer acquisition cost, and scale their ad spend to deliver repeatable results. As Nomadic’s in-house digital marketing rock-star, Ben has successfully implemented dozens of marketing campaigns and leverages AI via automated bidding strategies. By driving higher conversions and lower customer acquisition cost, the AI outperforms a purely manual approach every time.

Although the bidding strategies are constantly being refined, the human element is not forgotten. These advanced AI techniques do take consistent evaluating, tweaking, and updating. It is not to be mistaken with a “set it and forget it” or hands-off approach. The results are most impactful when human insight and technology are combined.

Cause for Concern

Although AI demonstrates great promise, we at Nomadic remain cautiously optimistic. The internet is facing a potential existential threat to qualitative content. Especially in the form of generated content and the ability for AI to quickly and easily generate “fake news”. (And search engine algorithms are not yet able to effectively filter or penalize said content).

Our team recently used a tool that enables users to generate content with great ease. As an experiment, we proceeded with creating an Artificially Generated blog post about Asheville. We spent approximately 20 minutes to ‘create’ this article. Almost all components of this blog post are created by AI (with the exception being the first sentence(s) which were used to prompt the content creation). Even the author image is generated by AI, and is not a real person.

Although this is an amateurish application of the technology, there are far greater concerns for the trajectory of this practice. in short, AI’s ability to recognize ‘real’ patterns in humanity- such as writing or visualization- then mimic those patterns and generate a data output will become more and ubiquitous. As a species, we will need to grow more discerning about the information we consume- and build AI-based tools to protect us. Or be steamrolled by our own creation.