Continuing on the lines of the talk he presented on the first day of exchange4media’s TechManch 2023, globally renowned AI expert, Daniel Hulme, CEO Satalia and Chief AI Officer, WPP gave his expert opinion on Brand Opportunities for Generative AI on Day 2.

“If you remember, yesterday I talked about automation. I talked about building systems that make decisions and then tomorrow they make the same decision and so. And that the definition of stupidity was doing the same thing over and over again, expecting a different answer. By that definition, automation is stupid, but that doesn’t hold true with automation, as these technologies are incredibly valuable. They drive huge amounts of value in business,” said Hulme.

He went on to recap the different definitions of AI, and how they as well as technologies that can arguably come under the banner of artificial intelligence had evolved over the years, way back from the 60s and 70s.

He further spoke about how the increasing complexity of technologies and our understanding of them was also evident from the many different forms of AI that exist today from Large Language Models or Generative AI to Predictive AI to a host of other suites, tools, and applications that ran on  and or provided AI models.

“Looking at AI through technology, looking at AI through definitions isn't very useful. And I argue that over the past 10 years I’ve seen new algorithms, new data computers that allowed us to do interesting things,” he said, going on to elucidate the various uses the new AI technologies, in addition to technologies that were commonly in use across agencies, creative studios and other media organizations over the world.

Hulme mentioned the now iconic Shah Rukh Khan and Cadbury Celebrations campaign which used AI capabilities to empower small town shops and stores to be able to boast at having a ‘celebrity endorsement.’  He also spoke about how Generative AI had the capacity to free up agency and media employees from mundane tasks, which required repetition rather than inspiration, so that they could concentrate on ideation and creation.

Indeed, Hulme went into ideas, products, services and even human enhancements, powered by AI and  that seem like science fiction, but are in fact being worked on in research labs, test markets and board rooms even as this sentence is read.

Speaking further about the vast potentialities of AI, Hulme said, “One of the things that we're doing with one of the biggest brands in the world is that we take a large language model and we train that large language model on the data of the employee, the marketing employee, and then we use that digital twin as asking questions. If I put you on this project, will you work well? If I put you on this team, will you thrive?” The implications of that are self-evident.

Another, more munificent sounding, project is with Microsoft, where “we're enhancing use the people's ability to see ingredients and the content of goods, not just not just taking the words that are on a piece of product and trying to end repeating those words, but using generative AI to enrich that text to describe it in a way that's going to resonate with that person that is visually impaired. So this is where we can use AI to extend and expand our own capabilities,” said Hulme.

“So those are just some of the examples that we've used internally to operate more effectively and also how they can be used in some of our campaigns. And as I said, this is a really nice framework because it helps you understand how to navigate this complex world of safety and ethics,” he added.

However, Hulme also argued, admittedly controversially, that there's no such thing as AI ethics. “One of the differences between AI and human beings is that AIs don't create any intent. Human beings create the intent, whether their intention is to put the marketing content down multiple channels, to route your vehicles to maximize the number of deliveries or to allocate your workforce to maximize the well being of your workforce. You have an intent, and then you build a system to try to achieve that intent.”

He added, “Where that system goes wrong, maybe it's biased. For example, I would argue that it is a safety problem. It is not an ethics problem. Ethics is the study of right and wrong, and it's the intent that needs to get scrutinized from an ethical perspective.”

Hulme noted the faster you can adapt to a changing world the more intelligent you are an adaptation means you need to be able to innovate and so over the past several years, organizations have been embracing new organizational paradigms

“All of the tools to build AI are essentially free. They're open source. The battleground for companies is not technology. The battleground is talent. And that's actually one of the biggest challenges that organizations have is people leaving because they're not doing more interesting things. So once you have engaged with talent, you need to then create an organizational structure that enables that talent to thrive,” exhorted Hulme.

“We've got an opportunity in this industry to apply AI to completely optimize our operating model. We know these technologies are now phenomenal at understanding humans, their behaviors, and they're even very good at manipulating those behaviors to benefit,” he said, noting that is an incredibly powerful position to be in.

Hulme concluded, “I believe that this industry needs to make sure that we have the right guardrails, the right structures in place to mitigate the accumulation of wealth and control with a small number of people. So on that note, I'm going to remind you all it's not good enough just to have a strong profitable business. You need to have a purpose. If you don't have a strong purpose, you're not going to attract customers, you're not going to attract clients, and you're not going to attract talent.”