Are Marketers Safe in the Autonomous Future?
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2 min read
In my last blog, I talked about how much our lives will change in the autonomous future.
But I can’t ignore the big fear many of us have: that automation will steal our jobs.
The thing is, I don’t think it will.
It’s true that you’ll need to learn new skills. But it’s also an opportunity to reevaluate our roles and whether we’re really reaching our full potential right now.
What’s more human than technology?
From when we first discovered how to make fire, to starting the development of artificial intelligence, our ingenuity and ability to shape the world around us has separated us from other species.
And we’ve always worked side-by-side with the technology we invent, helping us be more efficient and creative.
When it comes to our working relationships with technology, the car manufacturing industry provides us with plenty of inspiration. It’s long been a pioneer in robotics, but now humans can work more closely with robots than ever before.
Collaborative robots, or cobots, are now teaming up with humans to help them with things like safely carrying heavy objects – General Motors is even using exoskeletons to make workers stronger.
How do we stop automation from taking over?
There will always be things that only humans can do. There’s no better example than creativity.
But can machines ever possess that quality? Well, I suppose that depends on your definition of creativity, many machines have already been built over the years to generate art, with varying results.
The latest crop are AI-based, and they’re getting pretty good. In fact, a portrait created by AI recently sold at auction for $432,000.
But in this article, which asks whether algorithms can capture our ‘complex human consciousness’, the consensus from users in the comments section is loud and clear: absolutely not.
Most won’t accept AI-generated paintings as true art, so creativity and intuition will likely remain human traits long into the autonomous future.
Are marketers safe in the autonomous future?
Automation can already do so much to make marketers’ roles easier, from being the backbone of Account Based Marketing to helping you run always-on campaigns.
But a big benefit of automation is that marketers will be doing less of the mundane parts of campaigns, and more of the exciting, creative stuff.
The data required to make automation work can be powerful, but it’s still humans that must decide what to do with it.
You’ll only be out of a job if you carry on doing what a machine can do better.
Yes, that means you’ll need to keep learning new skills to remain relevant, but is that really a bad thing?
Even the most advanced automation can only do what it’s been programmed to do. It can’t think outside the box like you can. But it can inform everything you do, augmenting your creativity and performance to help you add value to what you do as a marketer.
So why fear something that’s going to give us so much? Automation isn’t going to steal our jobs. If anything, it will open the possibility for roles and products that don’t even exist yet.
I’ve given you a small glimpse into what I think the autonomous future will look like, but please get in touch to talk about what you can do with automation right now.
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