Advertising Week Europe Highlights - Part 1: AI Risks and Rewards

Advertising Week Europe has kicked off today and on The Talent Hack we will be distilling down some of the key themes and highlights for our readers. There are over 200 talks and events taking place with over 10,000 people being looked after at the central venue, The Picturehouse, every day.

There is no doubt there will be some key themes and trending topics through out the week and Day 1 has got underway looking at one of the biggest, AI and machine learning. You cant escape this at the moment in the industry and whatever your thoughts are, you have to accept that it will play a part in the future of marketing and work.

The over whelming consensus from the discussions so far is that AI and machine learning will be used in the near future to automate all of the boring tasks that we don't want to do. This sounds great, right? You will only have to do the best and most creative bits of your jobs! And this is true, but aside form the obvious nirvana, there are very real concerns about the wider social implications and how the implementation of this automation is managed.

Central to this is the societal point. How do we make sure there doesn't become a greater divide in our society with fewer people doing very highly skilled jobs, and the rest struggling for work because machines have made their jobs/ skill sets redundant. Blue collar workers are rightly worried, but we all should be, because the impact across society and generations would be felt if it is not managed sensitively and correctly.

In the near future it is likely that there will always be a human brain to check the work of machines (in law and accountancy for example will we feel comfortable having a machine tell us something, or do we need a human to tell us the machine is right?) we will just be operating more effectively and efficiently with their help.

A shocking fact which came up this morning with threw the Diversity issue centre stage: 'if you are BAME in the United Kingdom you are twice as likely to be out of work than a white person with the same skill set'.

So how can AI be used for good and what are the challenges when trying to create a diverse and inclusive workforce?

Firstly, if you point machine learning products at bias data, you will get bias results. That seems fairly obvious. But, it is also important to think about the people looking at the data. They too need to be as diverse as possible, otherwise unconscious bias will come in to play and story will just serve to accentuate bias trends.

Unilever's graduate scheme should be heralded as an example of getting this absolutely right. They use AI in the recruitment process of all graduates for the early stages and this has improved their diversity profile by 60%. The future needs to be all about working out what the problems are and how do we use the algorithms to help with that.

The private sector has been called upon to play a big part in the development of AI and machine learning to help solve these social and cultural problems. Companies need to use their CSR budgets to help initiatives, such as Code First Girls, to develop diverse and in demand talent pools. Large corporations have the ability to invest in AI as a force for good and this is where we can all benefit.

Healthcare is at the start of this journey with machines showing early potential to change the way hospitals and medicines are managed. Machines could also be used to help society make sense of the myriad of fake news, or otherwise, online to distill for people the truth, and what matters to them.

The machines are coming and the creative industry must take well managed risks, so we all get the right rewards.