Why AI Will Be a Key Part of Your Team, Not a Replacement

16 September 2019

Posted in: BSEO

Your time is an increasingly valuable commodity. It’s no longer feasible to conduct all the necessary tasks manually. Many tools now feature artificial intelligence to make paid advertising faster and more effective….but does it work? Is AI an opportunity or a threat?

Overview

What was the talk about?

Sal talked about how Artificial intelligence (AI) will be integrated more and more into our daily lives, and considered whether we should fear or embrace AI.

He started by defining AI and the different forms it can take:

  • General Artificial intelligence (GAI): This type of AI can be defined as an AI that can outperform humans on a plethora of general tasks. Think iRobot or Terminator. This is the way that movies generally depict the singularity, which leads to attempts to overthrow humanity.
  • Narrow AI: This type of AI is more task-specific and the type of AI that we commonly interact with during everyday activities. For example, facial recognition to unlock your smartphone.

Sal then went on to use Moore’s law to define the increase of data consumption and its exponential growth, which is due to having an increase in processing power. This is a very important point, as most AI models are data-driven. Therefore, the more data is available for an AI to train on, the more efficient it will be. He brought up one of the first speech recognition software models, which was trained using 100mb of data, as an example of how data availability and consumption have grown exponentially, and noted that this will drive the future of AI.

In his view, AI should be used as a tool and not feared. Instead of making people redundant, it may simply require them to refresh their skill sets.

Favourite quote

“AI is probably the most important thing humanity has ever worked on. I think it’s something more profound than electricity or fire.” – Sundar Pichai

Potential impact on the industry

AI will affect not just the SEO industry but many others as well. The drive for AI and automation will help satisfy our consumers’ ever-changing attitudes towards technology, its availability, and its consumption. Here are some examples of how AI has been deployed effectively to enhance services: Amazon, Youtube, and Netflix.

Some of the areas that Sal defined as areas of interest for AI deployment are:

  • Acquisition
  • Execution
  • Delivery

Key takeaways

  • AI shouldn’t be feared, but embraced as a tool for innovation.
  • AI will affect a lot of industries.
  • AI will help make life easier.
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