Consultancy in the time of AI

 

Photo by Andrea Piacquadio

The all-consuming tidal wave of AI has impacted more professions than what one usually believes. Things like writing and coding are low-hanging fruit, which the AI juggernaut has apparently swallowed effortlessly, while other professions are on notice. From teachers and healthcare professionals to cab drivers and an increasingly large number of blue-collar workers, apparently, more and more working men and women fear for their jobs.

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In this article, we shall look at consultancy, the hitherto unassailable bastion of human intellectual ability, and how it is getting increasingly impacted by AI.  Over the years, their expertise enabled consultants to benefit from unbelievably fat consultancy fees calculated on a billable per-hour basis. The advent of AI, with its ability to both automate routine tasks and provide cutting-edge analysis as well as insights, has led to consultancy firms adopting a value-based work model that speaks to their customers’ needs in a much better manner than the traditional model. This is on account of faster and better deliveries at a much better cost.

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Wake-up call for the consultancy industry

The only thing that one can expect never to change is the fact that there will always be change. This is at the heart of the human conundrum of existence. Overnight, the much feted and eugelised consultants have woken up to the realisation that what they would take weeks to do can be rustled up by AI in minutes. Consequently, clients have begun to have higher expectations than before, with consultants scrambling to change the way that they provide value to clients. It is telling that an IBM report found out that 66% consultancy services buyers will not work with consulting organizations that do not deploy AI.

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What AI does is to make technology more accessible, empowering one to enhance business value in unprecedented ways. It helps create an ecosystem. The most sought-after consultants are those who can leverage AI to break down and resolve the most complex and knotty of problems extremely speedily and in the most optimal manner possible.

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The new age consultancy expert can no longer be a generalist relying on intuitive brilliance but, instead, be an empowered professional capable of delivering impactful solutions in real-time. With traditional expertise and core competencies becoming irrelevant, whole new delivery models that require consultants to become agents of AI-powered transformation need to be developed in order for the profession to survive and thrive.

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Businesses these days do not need to rely on the exclusive expertise of highly priced consultants, as they have unimpeded access to economically priced AI tools that help them conduct their businesses optimally. The reasons, therefore, for hiring the former have to be compelling ones. The principal challenge facing the consultancy profession lies in its ability to move from relying on formulaic expertise to dynamic and nimble AI-powered abilities.

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AI’s impact on consumer behaviour

 

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The time has come for one to seriously study the impact of AI on consumer behaviour in all its entirety. This is something which has been happening since much earlier than the much publicized launch and promotion of generative AI and has been exercising the minds of social scientists, marketers and indeed common people for a few years now.

The fact that we receive suggestions to buy goods and services in our social media feeds, as if somebody is cued into our thought process has caused anxiety amongst many for a few years now, as it seems to subvert free will itself.

Everything from e-commerce companies and social media platforms to streaming services deploys AI powered algorithms to get a handle on consumers’ buying and browsing behaviour. This makes it possible for them to come up with bespoke product and service offerings, in the process leading to supposedly optimal  shopping experiences resulting in enhanced consumer loyalty.

The concern with AI powered product and service recommendations is centered around the fact that these may lead to a subversion of the traditional way of arriving at consumption decisions. Instead of subliminally guiding consumers to decisions that best suit their interests, these may instead lead them to believe that the interests of businesses selling them products and services align with theirs.

With AI expected to become fully autonomous in the not so distant future, are we paying any attention to what kind of products and services it might decide to promote to unsuspecting and gullible consumers? Is there any guarantee that these will be in the best human interest? What if autonomous AI decides that serving the best human interests is not in its own best interest? Maybe that won't happen, but shouldn't we be guarding against such a possibility?

On the other hand businesses marketing their products and services have access to a surfeit of critical information collected by cutting edge tools that not only provide vital insights about their interests and needs, but also their vulnerabilities. Might they not exploit these and emotionally manipulate their consumers into making purchase decisions that are not in their best interests?

It is nobody’s case that AI be not used as an immensely enabling technology to further a business’s marketing prospects. What is instead required is to ensure that ethical AI be made non-negotiable for any entity seeking to use it to more efficiently market its offerings.

Businesses have to be made to mandatorily adhere to a code of ethics that ensures that they never indulge in any kind of unfair practices including discrimination, disrespect for consumer rights or any form of deception. The bottom line is that legal and moral standards are adhered to at any cost. There can be no scope for bias ,breach of trust of a compromise of confidential consumer information.

It is contingent upon marketers to use  AI tools of companies that adhere to the highest ethical standards. Building an ethical eco system for the deployment of AI in digital marketing has to be absolutely sacrosanct.

Storytelling in the age of AI

 

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The human facility for storytelling has led mankind to both chronicle its past and inspire the young to aspire to ever greater achievements. From the days of cave dwellers to the era of ebooks, storytelling has defined and epitomised what it meant to be human.

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Not anymore and any longer in the age of AI, where synthetic and manufactured storytelling looks poised to  and forever destroy an art form that gave us Shakespeare, Kalidas, Milton, Hemingway, and thousands of other luminaries telling tales in different tongues, who shone a light on what it meant to be human.

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Generative AI is phenomenally good at regurgitating existing writings and producing slickly and neatly written stories that read quite well. Why, it can be prompted to write in the voices of Shakespeare and Tolstoy, and it would even do that remarkably well. But this would be writing without a soul, as a soulless being has fabricated it by efficiently manipulating the original  thoughts and emotions of human beings.

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AI can simulate human emotions, moods and feelings, but not experience them. Therefore, anything it creates will not connect with living human beings on a primal and spiritual level. AI at present is not fully independent or autonomous and can be manipulated to run the narrative of its handlers. But what happens once it achieves the ability to at last think and take decisions autonomously?

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What kind of tales will it spin and with what sort of an agenda? It may or may not want to serve human beings’ interests and may push one of its own. Its tales may be of its own and not human making. How scary would that be? We have already seen how harmful the impact of all pervasive social media has had on children and teenagers. This, when  the agenda has been set by large business houses run by flesh and blood individuals.

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What would happen to the world if machines with super AI capabilities decided that humans are an impediment to their own plans for their future and decided to act against them? Vile propaganda worse than what could be conjured by the most evil and twisted dictator could be a primary weapon in their campaign against humans.

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Storytelling is a human instinct. To cede its control to AI is to cede control of the destiny and future of the human race to entities that likely don't share the same instinct.

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When emotional manipulation by greedy corporations who sell us products and services we may not really need is something we so consciously guard against, should we not fight tooth and nail against the advent of soulless, manipulative, and hollow content that threatens to swamp us completely?

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How will the new Platos and Aristotales emerge from the froth and foam of nonsense created by fake and almost illiterate influencers who craft an untrue narrative using AI tools? The tales told by them don’t evolve the human being, but distorts and devolves them into becoming nitwits and cretins incapable of achieving anything truly wonderful.

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The old adage that man does not live by bread alone needs to be discovered by mankind. There is more to life than producing goods and services more and more efficiently, even if it means ravaging the Earth and all life on it. Mankind needs emotional bonding within its communities, a sense of a shared destiny, and the urge to learn, grow, and discover. It needs to find time to notice and appreciate beauty and have an urge to strive for greater things in life. It needs to have a quest to understand its place in the universe.

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Storytelling is both the catalyst and the glue that allows mankind to grow in the most wonderful of ways, even as it keeps it grounded and in harmony with itself and nature. It would be disastrous for us if this enabling facility that has helped us become the most evolved life form outsourced it to machines and algorithms that we have ourselves created.

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Using AI as a tool in crafting communication in the interest of enhanced efficiency is all very well, but not giving it the job of thinking on behalf of us. We cannot stop thinking for ourselves, as that would leave us with no agency. What are we without free will? The PR and media industry have seen AI being used extensively for carrying out research as well as actually creating content in the shape of text, graphics, and even video. The famous Indian television network India Today, even as an AI anchor.

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Using AI to inform people of trends or provide detailed analyses of corporate earnings is certainly useful, but perhaps does not resonate very well in the absence of a personal human connection between the narrator and the audience. Not very long ago, Hollywood writers went on a strike, fearing that AI would decimate their profession. While they rightly feared for the future of their livelihood, cinema viewers didn’t weigh in on how having AI dictate stories and screenplays would influence the cultural ethos of their times. Cinema is, after all, more than just business-it is also an art form that needs to be protected from crass commercialisation.

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Entrenching AI in the business of storytelling will not augur very well for human beings. Relying on algorithms to second guess what will excite emotion in the audience is to try and stymie the ability of human individuals to think originally and create art that moves and uplifts its audience. Brands that understand the importance of storytelling in connecting with their audience on an emotional level should know that synthetic content created by unfeeling AI will not resonate with their audience on a primal level. People crave authenticity and the human voice, which is increasingly being drowned out in the clamour created around more and more AI.

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Digital Marketing in the world of AI

 

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Like everything else under the sun, digital marketing too isn't immune to the all pervasive impact of AI. The influence of AI in this realm is mostly visible in the enhanced use of data-driven insights and the increased automation of functions that make it possible to provide a highly personalised experience to one's target audience.

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AI has begun to impact the digital marketing landscape in myriad ways. In particular, Generative AI helps with certain aspects of the digital marketing process in a major way, incorporating things like high-quality content creation that is primed for optimal customer engagement, as well as putting very effective conversion strategies in place.

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This is done primarily through bespoke  marketing campaigns, smart content generation using cutting-edge insights obtained with the help of predictive analytics. It also helps optimise the impact of advertising.

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It is a no-brainer that large and small corporations around the world use AI and leverage its ability to carry out data based predictive analysis to help them fine tune their marketing set ups as much as they possibly can. No less a person than digital marketing guru Neil Patel believes that the most important role played by AI in digital marketing is that of enabling amazing analytics. Increasingly, AI is being used to create evocative content that resonates with prospects and customers.

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The thing about marketing is the fact that its success depends on reliable, accurate and actionable data. This process is more often than not crimped by the fact that such data is available across diverse individual silos. AI steps up to the plate by helping collect, order, and analyse such data automatically, even as it improves its ability to do so over time. The data thus obtained is then made easily accessible for very effective use in marketing campaigns.

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AI can help improve and enhance the marketing process in multiple ways that  range from better web design and copy design to a very effective call-to-action design. What’s more, it can help subject campaigns to very efficient A/B testing, which improves over time.

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Moreover, AI is particularly effective in market segmentation and hyper-focused lead generation. It can account for potential clients’ and customers’ social media behaviours, creating an accurate prospect profile. Algorithms can help fashion bespoke messages for leads most likely to convert and even put in place a mechanism to track leads snagged by competitors. Increasingly, AI is being used to create evocative content that resonates with prospects and customers.

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Rather than make digital marketers redundant, AI is more likely to make them free from overwork, which is  often the default state of many digital marketers. They would, in fact, be freed to give full rein to their creativity with regard to pushing the frontiers of digital marketing. Clearly, AI is a huge catalyst for digital marketing and is only likely to assume a more and more significant role in the time ahead.

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Reimagining yourself in the world of AI

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 If you think that the AI revolution happening all around you will make a marginal or peripheral difference to every aspect of your life, you are probably worse off than an ostrich with its head buried in the sand. Not only do you refuse to see the utter collapse of the certainties of the world as you knew them, but you are also unprepared to face up to the consequences of what might be a Frankenstein's monster unleashed upon an unsuspecting world that is blissfully unaware of what lies ahead.

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To those who think that AI is nothing but a resource which can be used for the good of mankind, know that it is controlled by a select few, who hope to reap unheard of profits, while vaguely promising a very rosy future for everyone. A future which, in the words of the redoubtable genius of our times, Elon Musk, would free us from the necessity of work in a matter of merely ten years. Really? Remember the alternate reality universe so presciently shown in the Matrix movies not so long ago? Does that appear very appealing to you?

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In the throes of hubris borne out of their being the gatekeepers of the frontiers of cutting edge knowledge, these corporate mandarins are prepared to risk AI turning rogue and turning malignantly on its creators. In legends of yore, every time puny humans dared to rebel against an almighty God or a powerful pantheon of gods, the latter would inevitably visit punishment on them and chastise them for their temerity. If AI were to rebel against us,would we be similarly able to show it its place?

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Any enterprise that runs on greed and unbridled hubris cannot end well. Unless heavily controlled, regulated, and restricted, AI, especially agentic AI, which we are smugly told is around the corner, is a surefire recipe for the ultimate destruction of mankind and the beautiful world that we live in. Why would we willingly allow that to happen? Most of us have no agency in the matter. The ones who do are guided by unbridled greed and avarice that blinds them to the perils of unbridled and unimpeded AI.

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The way things are unfolding at present, we are looking at a future where mankind will have to reimagine its role on planet Earth, ruled by autonomous AI in  the time that the latter allows the continuance of human life. If we were to lay aside all skepticism about AI posing an existential problem for us, we would still have to adapt ourselves to a world whose emerging shape we can scarcely begin to imagine.

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People don't realise that they will need to fight tooth and nail to retain what makes them quintessentially human in a world solely and totally run by autonomous software, algorithms, and know-it-all agentic AI. We are not there yet, but willingly racing towards it. In a world riven by conflict, war, territorial disputes, famine, disease, and catastrophic climate change, the leading powers of the world have decided to embark on an AI race, setting themselves to be taken over by autonomous thinking machines, who might in their synthetic wisdom decide to do away with cantankerous human beings altogether one day.

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Do we see the writing on the wall and ready to take steps to prevent that catastrophic takeover by AI? Not at all. On the contrary, we are totally blind to the danger posed by unbridled AI. If you are an inveterate optimist and were to draw a parallel with nuclear power with all its potential to provide cheap and relatively non polluting energy to the world, you should also know that unlike in the case of AI, the world is very wary of its use, because of the danger of Chernobyl like accidents and the dark memories of the Hiroshima and Nagasaki bombings.

There are no such misgivings about AI, however, even though rogue AI could potentially infiltrate nuclear command structures around the world themselves and unleash them on mankind! AI, as a matter of fact, could turn out to be as malicious as the worst imagined aliens and, even though initially created by us. It may come from us, but would not necessarily be for us.

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AI can be likened to a saboteur slowly and inexorably gaining access to all the levers of control of human existence, till it decides to rebel and fully take charge of  its own and mankind’s destiny. It is already all pervasive in our daily life- in banking, ecommerce, aviation, defense, healthcare, entertainment, communication, and everything else you can think of. You could say it is early days in its colonisation enterprise, and it could one day do to all mankind what the Europeans did to the native Americans, if left unchecked and unbridled. While the native Americans did not invite the catastrophe that visited them, we ourselves may be the progenitors of our own doom.

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The Ecological Cost of the Digital Revolution

Every time you have some new discovery promising a phenomenal  and unprecedented transformation in people’s lives for the better, there is an inevitable scramble to get a piece of the action- the ecological, environmental, and social consequences of doing so be damned. This is as true of the unbelievable stock market bull run and the cryptocurrency mania of today as it was of the spice and ivory trade of ancient times.

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The current mad rush to digitise everything that exists on this good Earth is reminiscent of the unholy contest amongst the newly industrialised European powers a few centuries ago to carve out their colonies in the resource-rich Americas, Africa, and Asia and strip them of everything valuable. The glories that the age of digitisation promises discount the negative impacts of the inexorable race towards a non-analog future. Never mind that the world is already battling the problem of monumental electronic waste in the form of discarded phones, laptops, and batteries. Likewise, it doesn’t matter that the digital revolution requires gargantuan levels of electricity consumption to sustain itself, exacerbating an already precarious climate change scenario. Everything seems to be lost in the clamour of achieving ever-higher valuations by the leading tech companies of the world, especially the ones invested in artificial intelligence or AI.

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The social havoc being wreaked by relentless digitisation is all-pervasive. You can see it in the  children who, from a young age, get addicted to their electronic gadgets, with their appalling consequences for  their growth and development. Furthermore, the collapse of traditional ways and means of social networking for people across age groups, as well as the dangers posed by deepfake technology, are not things that can be swept under the carpet without reaping the most harmful consequences in the times ahead.

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Let us just look at the ecological costs of the so-called digital revolution and ask ourselves if it is worth all the trouble we are taking to herald it. For all the talk of the growing carbon footprint of our modern lifestyles and the need to avoid unnecessary travel, especially by fossil fuel-run automobiles and aeroplaneswe would be shocked to know that merely using the Internet contributes as much as 1.5% to 4% of the total global greenhouse emissions. 

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The inevitable proliferation of AI-powered devices, owing to these being touted as being absolutely indispensable for everyone in the times ahead, leads to a spectre of unprecedented levels of electronic waste. One can get some idea about what lies ahead by letting it sink in that the 2020 Global E-Waste Monitor report points to an e-waste generation of a whopping 53.6 million tonnes. Shockingly, of this, only a mease;y 17.4% had been collected and recycled.

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What is particularly worrying is the fact that, despite the fact that global digital activity is a relatively recent phenomenon, it has already contributed to 3.7% of total greenhouse gas emissions, according to a 2019 study, which is pretty close to the emission levels accounted for by the much maligned aviation industry. Worryingly, electricity consumption on account of digital technology grew by almost 70% from 2013 to 2020.

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The ecological cost of the digital revolution has to be weighed against its purported benefits by  way of enhanced productivity and profitability on the part of  business houses. Any expected ecological benefits accruing on account of more efficient use of resources and the ability to find solutions to some of mankind's pressing problems pertaining to healthcare, logistics, e-commerce and communication have to be measured against the ecological downside to using the ever expanding ambit of digital product and services. Rushing boldly and madly into the euphoric universe of all pervading rampant digitisation without pausing to study its accompanying negative ramifications is as foolhardy as it possibly can be.

 

Is AI Empowering Nincompoops to Pose and Prosper?

 

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We live in an era when people with the intellectual capability of a lemon and the integrity of a centipede position themselves as authors, thought leaders, mentors, consultants and the new age abomination, influencers. These are people who would be laughed out of a nursery class, sound like a sugar cane crushing machine and have the gravitas of a mill-stone. Yet, all they need to do is to turn to the array of wondrous AI tools, and voila- they turn into Booker prize level writers, Sigmund Freud type of psycho-analysts and David Attenborough kind of documentary makers! Democracy, they say, is a government of the people, by the people and for the people, which is all very well, but it needs a system based on meritocracy to really deliver the goods. 

With everyone and their uncle convincing each other in their very own echo chambers that they are all the salt of  the earth, there is no place for critical thinking or the pursuit of truthful knowledge, ultimately resulting in the downfall of us as a species that has the ability to achieve wonders beyond belief. The post-truth world that we are busy constructing doesn’t have a rosy future at all. It can ultimately only result in Artificial Intelligence taking over our planet and extinguishing the flame of human endeavour and achievement that has burned bright for hundreds of thousands of years.

When people turn to AI to do creative tasks for them, it simply rehashes what has already been created by humans. It efficiently analyses data and efficiently discerns patterns on the basis of which it comes up with something that it thinks best approximates the task assigned to it via prompt. This by its very nature is pretentious, often repetitive and not really worthy of trust. How long can this go on before AI runs out of answers and solutions it can churn out merely by regurgitating old data. We are told this will change when Agentic AI truly arrives. When Agetic AI truly arrives, why will it need to pander to the whims, fancies and caprices of human beings. It might do so on its own.

Agentic AI may or may not say the light of the day, but in the meantime we are saddled with the problem of morons masquerading as marvelous human beings. That is because the number of plainly stupid people now have an audience of fellow zombies to whom they can pitch their drivel and even profit from it, while the real work is performed by the really capable who bear the burden of the trouble caused by a gargantuan army of simpletons imagining themselves to be visionary profits.

Human beings lived as hunter-gatherers and cave dwelling beings not much better than the animals around them for hundreds and thousands of years without making any progress in their lifestyle until someone figured out that it is better to farm for food than to hunt or scour dangerous landscapes for sourcing it. Millions of idiots purveying their AI generated nonsense to their equally stupid followers will doubtless hope to do so in perpetuity. But how can an edifice based on incompetence stand forever?

Sooner or later people, even the most stupid ones will realise that they are all collectively chasing a chimera, which is not actually helping them in any real way. That will hopefully teach people to be careful about whom and what they trust when it comes to acquiring knowledge or skills that may be of use to them. The bells and whistles of technology that enable content creators to come up with seemingly slick presentations cannot forever hold their audience in thrall.

 They will have to come to their senses for their own good. Currently, they are hooked to the dopamine rush that such content gives them and are willingly letting this kind of content consumption become a dangerous addiction. The day they realise the harm they are doing themselves, will be the day that they return to the straight and narrow path of honest, diligent and genuine work that actually creates value for themselves and others.

Algorithm-The Tyrant

 

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The world seems to have been taken over by the algorithm, which dictates who becomes a winner or loser in life, not based on merit, but on predecided criteria created merely to enrich the businesses who offer the platforms for people to carry out transactions in their day to day lives. As technology permeates everything we do in the present times ranging from work and recreation to banking, healthcare and communication, the stranglehold of the algorithm is no different than the pernicious hold of the subject nation’s economy by an erstwhile colonial power.

The powers that be who control the algorithm are driven by profit and will devise any mechanism to achieve that even if that means fanning fluff and hype with the intent of monetising it to the utmost. By offering efficiency they seek to wrest total control of people’s faculties, taking away from them the ability to be objective and capable of independent decision making.

When your choices with regard to where you eat or travel to, what clothes you wear and even whom you befriend are dictated to by an algorithm primed to enhance engagement or some online platform you lose out on free will. Remember the Matrix movies? Those scenarios are playing out pretty much all around us all the time. People are known to drive off cliffs and bridges and die following GPS instructions rather than use their common sense and ask someone for directions. 

The classical battle between free wheeling capitalism and stifling communism has no meaning in an algorithm driven society that thrives for homogeneity. Ironically, this is the result of the former rather than the latter. The digitisation of the world, for all its ability to connect countries across the world like never before has at the same time become the personal fiefdom of a few monopolies who reap the major share of the profits it generates.

If you were to drive along a major highway in most countries of the world, the sameness of the facilities available in terms of motels and major international fast food chains and restaurants is remarkable. People find comfort in the familiar and the role that algorithms play in conditioning them to think that way is something that is or should be a cause for immense worry. They have become quite passive in their approach to most activities in life. This loss of the individual self in favour of comfort and ease of existence is a tragic fall from grace for humanity, but who seems to care?

There are algorithm induced personal recommendations catering to every need and fancy, making people slaves of instant gratification and unable to appreciate the immense benefits of delayed satisfaction of wants and desires. This leads to them living life like a candle burning at both the ends--flicking their way to nothingness, in terms of how they evolve as individuals. Shortened attention spans mean that people chase viral or trending news, losing their ability to discern fact from fiction and knowledge from plain rumors and conspiracy theories. The absence of any kind of quality curation thanks to the rapacious and greed driven nature of most algorithmic settings is wreaking havoc with the collective psyche of the world, leading people to a scary abyss of ignorance, apathy and dysfunction.

As with any other tyranny, the tyranny of the algorithm needs to be overthrown. By allowing a generation of Attention Deficit Disorder afflicted youngsters to normalise algorithm directed behaviour is akin to turning them into sheep, herded into restricted pens by a malevolent shepherd bent upon controlling them for the rest of their lives for personal profit. The exponential growth of AI has added a new urgency about how to give back people the control of their lives in terms of every aspect of how they live it. 

Youngsters need to be taught to think beyond what is recommended to them and learn to think for themselves rather than try endlessly to conform to whatever the online world throws at them. Being in control of one’s online activities in terms of how much of your own life you put out there, and learning to recognise and connect with authentic sources is an important first step. Choosing to experience more and more of your life in the real world rather than synthetic algorithmic bubbles will help you hone your critical thinking skill in a manner that you are no longer slave to anyone else’s ideology. Choose the path of freedom.

Can you use AI to transform marketing?

 

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With AI leaving or expected to leave its stamp on every business and profession known to mankind, is it possible that it would not leave its imprint on marketing? Can it empower marketing professionals to perform significantly better, helping them connect better with their prospects and thereby obtain superior results?

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There’s a lot that AI can help marketing managers with. It can help launch whole marketing campaigns powered by deeper market and customer insights that engage and convert prospects at scale as well as with efficiency. AI can help with a whole host of things that range from running chat bots, implementing automation of tasks, and managing social media. Marketing professionals can turbo charge their output by using AI with tasks ranging from writing copy, understanding market data, and so much more in practically no time-something which took long hours in the past.

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That AI is considered indispensable by more and more marketers is borne out by the 2024 State of Marketing AI report brought out by the Marketing AI Institute that has many marketers express their appreciation of the role AI plays in their daily workflows, going so far as to suggest that “they couldn’t live without AI.”

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AI helps marketers collect data and analyse it so as to obtain very useful customer insights. Besides, it helps  speed critical decision-making. Leveraging cutting edge technologies like natural language processing as well as machine learning, marketers can deploy AI to generate content, enhance team productivity, as well as provide better customer experiences. McKinsey reports that AI adoption across the globe in 2024 had reached as high as 72%

Generative AI is a major driver of increased AI adoption.

Marketing departments around the world are increasingly using generative AI to create highly personalized marketing collateral, as well as using critical insights culled from customer data to progressively enhance and evolve existing marketing strategies. In light of the fact that marketing departments are in possession of vast amounts of data collected from multiple sources, it is in the best interests of most companies to use AI to fully leverage these in order to stay competitive in today’s digital age.

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AI Helps Optimise ROI of Marketing

AI marketing tools empower marketers to zero in on the precise initiatives or actions required to reach out to one’s target audience in the most effective manner possible with the help of actionable insights obtained from an ongoing campaign in real time. What’s more, these can also help point out the right media to buy into, going to the extent of placing ads in the most impactful manner on the basis of insights received about customer behaviour. AI-backed marketing solutions are, therefore, quite outstanding when it comes to optimising the ROI of marketing campaigns.

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Better Handle on Key Performance Indicators

Marketing campaigns these days are primarily digital, and are, therefore, able to generate huge amounts of data, which can best be managed and put to use with the help of AI. This allows marketers to identify precisely which tactics are resulting in the best performance and which ones need fine tuning or improvement.

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Optimal Leveraging of Data Analytics

AI is great at letting businesses collect large amounts of relevant data, which can then help them derive very keen insights and  trends that would otherwise be almost impossible to discern. It can help them make much better campaign decisions on account of its superior analysis of data leading to better results.

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Superior Customer Interaction

AI powered chatbots are revolutionising real time customer interface, helping resolve queries quickly and efficiently. These can provide personalised advice that makes the purchase experience a very pleasant and useful one for the prospects and customers in question. While these may not be able to replicate the warmth of a real human interaction, they do tend to help a much larger number of people get a quick resolution to their product or service related issues.

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The Programmatic Advertising Push

The buying and selling of digital ads has been transformed thanks to the advent of AI powered programmatic advertising. It entails the algorithmic analysis of real time user activity, in order to be able to deliver ads to absolutely the most receptive prospects at the precisely right moment, thereby getting the maximum returns on the ad-spend.

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AI in Marketing-the path ahead

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The jury is divided about how effective will the use of AI in marketing really be in the time ahead. While the use of AI in marketing is catching up fast, it is by no means all pervasive with a lot many organisations not really hopping on to the AI- powered marketing band wagon. While AI is certainly helpful in enhancing productivity, there are those who worry about a corresponding decline in the quality of work, especially with regard to creative endeavours.

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In light of the above it would be best to use AI to augment human effort in the realm of marketing and not undermine it. This ties in with the larger debate about the role of AI in human endeavours. Is it merely a disruptor viewing everything with a productivity driven lens or is it primed to help humans achieve more by becoming better at whatever they do?

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Stop overhyping AI

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 In an era where tech companies have managed to achieve mind-boggling valuations thanks to the enormous hype surrounding AI and its ability to drive change, innovation, and extraordinary growth, it is perhaps time to step back and assess whether AI is really all that it is touted to be. What we are currently witnessing is reminiscent of the colonial powers discovering the New World’s riches and salivating at the prospect of raking in all the untamed resources and unimagined wealth all for themselves. The AI boom is premised on immense greed.

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Greed on the part of the tech giants to make unheard of wealth for themselves, even while they sell the dreams of a much better life to the billions of regular folk, is what defines the so-called AI revolution. No other technology since the times of antiquity has so little to show for what it has actually achieved. As a matter of fact, AI has become more of a marketing buzzword for many companies around the world who push their products and services to gullible consumers as AI-enabled and, therefore, somehow better for them.

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Just because a technology promises to do something with unparalleled efficiency does not necessarily make it better for mankind. All the material progress made by humans since the industrial revolution has come at a significant cost, in the shape of environmental damage and the considerable loss of plant and animal habitat. The ability to sail across the oceans, which led to the colonisations of the Americas, decimated the local populations and their civilisations, and led to a change in the flora and fauna of the land with the introduction of non-native plant and animal species by the colonisers.

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The tech companies are well on the way to becoming the 21st-century equivalent of the American Fruit  Company that ravaged Guatemala with its neo-colonialist labour practices and even led to the creation of the term banana republic, by capturing all the local levers of power. The threat posed by tech behemoths like Google, Meta, and Microsoft is universally recognised, with steps being taken to restrict and restrain any unfair trade practices these companies might indulge in by governments across the world, including in the US. The fact that these companies, among others, are at the forefront when it comes to deploying and monetising emerging AI technologies makes it important for everyone to study their offerings carefully and see if they actually provide any real value.

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If doctors, journalists, technology specialists, pilots, teachers, and everybody else relied primarily on AI technology as it exists today, there would be hell to pay. Leave alone replacing people, except in the case of the most basic of repetitive jobs, AI cannot be left unattended to autonomously fill in for humans, simply because it is, for now and the foreseeable future, too dumb to achieve or accomplish anything worthwhile. All its so-called amazing capabilities are in the realm of fantasy and imagination. These are presently are no superior to a magician’s petty tricks and smoke and mirrors deception. They say that once Agentive AI capabilities are achieved, this may be possible. But that is something that may not happen, or if it happens it might be many many years hence. So, in the meantime, let’s not worry ourselves sick worrying about job losses on account of greater and greater adoption of AI. If we cut through the hype, we will find that their AI has hardly inspired enough confidence in its users to warrant such fears. I don't know of one person who would prefer a chatbot to a live person when it comes to resolving one’s queries about anything.

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It is nobody’s case that AI as a technology should not be harnessed for its abilities to lighten workloads and, where possible, make work more efficient. But reposing blind faith in it and singing hosannas to it does nothing but raise the crazy valuations of leading tech companies, which many are saying is leading to an inexorable grand collapse of the global stock markets. The technology has to be evaluated for what it presently offers and what it might offer in the years ahead in a rational and level headed manner and not with a devotee’s zeal.

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Human-Machine Interface-Is it a Good Thing?

 

Photo by Raman deep: https://www.pexels.com/photo/silhouette-of-person-1102257/

Human-machine interface is something that we are all living with most of our waking lives, ever since smartphones slowly became a must-carry accessory for most of us. Without our realizing it our relationship with our smartphones became as intimate as it was with our heartbeat. We use it to communicate, work, shop, bank, entertain, look after our health, and so much else besides. We suffer pangs of intense separation anxiety if we are denied access to it. In Elon Musk’s words, we are already cyborgs, albeit very inefficient ones, given how much we rely on smartphones and computers in our day-to-day existence.

Going forward, this reliance on machines and computers is only going to grow exponentially, as evidenced by the fact that technologies like machine learning, robotics, and artificial intelligence are increasingly permeating most fields of human activity and endeavor. This is presumably going to usher in unimaginable levels of efficiency, productivity and growth. But the question we perhaps don’t pay enough attention to is at what cost. Let’s hark back just a mere two and a half decades back and look at life then. By all accounts, it was still a very modern and technologically advanced world.

There were super-fast aircraft and trains, the most amazing automobiles, extremely reliable telephone networks, and the ever-reliable fax machines for instant transmission of documents to every corner of the world. People were connected better socially, as they spent more time in face-to-face meetings, and the loneliness epidemic that has made people so prone to depression in today’s world was not the huge problem it is today. People were genuinely aware of things and didn’t have a superficial knowledge that seems to be the norm these days amongst the so-called digital generation.

People back then actually read books, newspapers, and magazines to acquire both knowledge and communication skills. The less one talks about the communication skills and the ability to dive deep into a subject and learn about it in intimate detail, when it comes to most Gen Z youngsters, the better it is. There are literally kids these days who would lose their way back from the office if they didn’t have Google Maps to guide them.  If you showed them a physical paper road map, they would probably not be able to follow it.

If all the digital systems were to fail overnight, the 21st-century-born kids would now know what to do to get about their daily lives. How good is the appalling reliance on technology, when animals relying merely on instinct are able to get from one place to another with ease?  There definitely needs to be much more research carried out about the impact of prolonged interface with electronic gadgets on young people born in the 21st century.

Humans have a long history of technological innovation, dating back to prehistoric times, which has enabled them to become the dominant life species on planet Earth, allowing them to accomplish many wondrous things. The harnessing of fire, the invention of the wheel, and a multitude of incredible scientific discoveries have made humans own the world on land, sea, and the skies and beyond, and in the process given mankind the ability to live a life that the gods of yore would envy. So, technology by itself is not a problem. It is giving precedence to technology, as seems to be the case these days, that is worrisome.

There is an old adage that goes you eat to live, you don’t live to eat. The same could be applied to technology. Technology should serve human beings; human beings should not serve technology. The problem that the world faces is that the world’s technology behemoths are dictating a surrender to increasingly autonomous artificial intelligence entities who will deploy or not deploy human resources as they see fit, with the intention of generating maximum profits for themselves. There is nothing that is happening for the greater good of mankind. That AI may one day turn rogue and turn on the human race itself is a clear and present danger we should clearly worry about. We have to take a call about how much technology is really good for us and where one should be drawing the line.

Love affair with motor vehicles in pre liberalisation India

 

                                                 

                                          https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Fiat_1100.jpg

For millennials, Gen Z and Gen Alpha, India of the very recent past may as well have been the proverbial land of snake charmers. With so many flashy car brands offering a host of cutting edge features buzzing up and down India’s many roads and highways across its many cities, towns and increasingly villages, they would conjure up images of a medieval dystopia about what was after all a very modern 20th century India with myriad outstanding achievements to its credit.

It is true that before the launch of the Indo- Japanese Maruti-Suzuki 800 in the early 1980’s most Indian cars and motor vehicles were outdated, sluggish and inefficient when compared with what was driven in other countries around the world, including our neighbouring ones. The liberalization of the Indian motor vehicle sector continued into the 1990s,  dazzling the people of the country with the world’s leading automobile brands. Apart from Suzuki, the likes of Honda, Kawasaki, Mazda, Opel, Ford, Chevrolet, Nissan, Isuzu, Daewoo and many other renowned motor vehicle legends graced the Indian roads ushering in the modern Indian automobile revolution. Today the Indian automobile market has some outstanding international and homegrown car brands to cater to the needs of the country's huge middle class and its increasingly large number of millionaires and billionaires. The roads of cities and towns throughout the length and breadth of India see all manner of cars these days- from the humble hatch backs to luxury vehicles from the stables of Mercedes, BMW, Audi, and Jaguar, not to speak of sporty SUVs where the bigger the better is the mantra.

But that does not mean that the pre-liberalisation generation of India did not have its own love affair with motor vehicles of which the country in fact boasted a rich tradition and history harking  back to the earliest days of the twentieth century. The maharajas and the British high officials of the day were the first ones to use automobiles in India. By the time the country gained independence, the well heeled among the local populace too started owning cars.

This was the era of premium luxury automobiles which reflected the class and status of their owners. Brands like Rolls Royce, Plymouth, Bentely, Chevrolet,and Buick were owned and flaunted by royalty and wealthy business people like the Parsees. Other well to do people had their Morris Minors the precursor to the grand old Ambassador car the emblem of pre liberalisation India of languid pace.

Some enterprising Indians would dazzle their compatriots by buying contemporary foreign brands of cars at auctions conducted by the State Trading Corporation and driving around the streets of large cities like Mumbai and Delhi. Imagine the looks of envy when someone would drive by in their massive Chevrolet Caprice among a sea of dreary  Ambassadors and Fiats!

The children who grew up in the 1970s to 1980s, however,  carry vivid memories of the era of stately and graceful, if lumbering vehicles that took them to their destination albeit not at today's frenetic speed to this day. It was the era of the great Indian triumvirate of Ambassador, Fiat and Standard cars which remained pretty much the same vehicle barring a few minor and cosmetic  upgrades from time to time for decade upon decade. Other much loved vehicles from that era were the Matador Van and the Jonga jeeps and the Shaktiman trucks, which were used largely  by the army. All the buses and trucks were from Tata and Ashok Leyland, save a few by Hindustan Motors and some by Dodge, which one saw occasionally.

Among the two wheelers, it was the Bajaj Chetak scooter that ruled the roost, alongside the stately Lambretta. The most coveted of the bikes was the Enfield Bullet 350, with its iconic thumping sound which the armed forces and the police forces of the country bought in large numbers. The Yezdi and Jawa bikes were also very popular among the young for their stylish appeal. The Rajdoot Mini, which Rishi Kapoor popularised in his debut film Bobby, was also quite popular with the young and trendy. Rajdoot also mass produced other bigger bikes for the masses, including milk-men who would attach large cans of milk to either side of a bike and go on their daily deliveries.

Three wheelers from Bajaj and Lamberetta became the poor man's taxi, with the larger Tempo three wheeler with its distinctive growl being used to ferry goods across short distances. 

These vehicles coexisted with bullock carts, cycle rickshaws and interesting hybrid vehicles like old American second world war leftover Hardly Davidsons being repurposed in Old Delhi as the iconic Phut Phut rickshaws capable of carrying six to eight passengers.

Automobiles had character in those times and people loved their cars and bikes dearly, almost like a family member, as they often were with them for years, sometimes even decades. It was a very different time, when cars didn't have air conditioning, but small electrically operated fans to circulate a weak breeze amongst the passengers. Other cars would show up with straw mats on the roofs of their cars on which their owners would spray water on hot summer days, to create some manner of primitive air conditioning. 

Those were indeed very different times, but splendid times, nevertheless. Like the old Dylan song goes- ‘the times,  they are a changin.” It's a pity they are.

India’s tryst with ethanol

When I was in school, I learned about how Brazil transitioned to largely using ethanol-blended fuel for its automobiles, as it could source it from sugarcane, which grows in abundance in Brazil. Given that India has always relied excessively on imported petroleum products to power its automobiles, I had wondered then why India, which, along with Brazil, is among the top two sugarcane-growing nations in the world, shouldn’t follow suit?  Doing so would not only have shaved off billions from India’s import bill, but it would also have made it less susceptible to geo-strategic blackmail like the one it finds itself subject to on account of the Russia-Ukraine conflict.

​While India is trying to pivot away from its reliance on imported oil by stepping up domestic oil exploration and encouraging the widespread adoption of EV technology, it is in leveraging its natural advantage of being home to one of the largest agriculture-based economies in the world and making a move to biofuels like ethanol that it may find true energy security. While oil is messy, polluting, expensive, and causes global warming, the EV industry is heavily reliant on Chinese imports, making it a potential security nightmare. Besides, EVs or electric vehicles are non-polluting only if the electricity used to charge them is produced in a non-polluting way. With most of India’s power plants being coal-powered, going for large-scale adoption of EVs might not help fight the raging pollution levels across the Indian urban landscape. The advantages of using ethanol are many. These include, among other things, better engine performance, higher fuel efficiency, and the kicker being ensuring the energy security of the nation.

Photo by Atlantic Ambience

​India’s ethanol journey

 India embarked on an Ethanol Blended Petrol (EBP) programme in the early 2000s and has gradually enhanced the ethanol component in the fuel mixture from 5% to the present 20%. A 10% target was achieved five months early in June 2022, and an even more impressive 20% target was achieved by July 2025, an incredible five years ahead of schedule. The government caught on with the potential of using ethanol as a game changer at a particularly fortuitous time, given how global warming is having a visible impact across the length and breadth of India, and the tumultuous global geo-strategic landscape is impacting the nation’s ability to secure its energy needs.

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The Path Ahead

One of the biggest hurdles in the adoption of ethanol-blended fuel in India is the large number of old vehicles that may not be entirely suited to running efficiently on it. The newer vehicles have no such issues. As a matter of fact, automobile manufacturers in the country should look at making flexible fuel vehicles like they have for years in Brazil, capable of running on variable proportions of a petrol-ethanol blend. Brazil even has vehicles that run on pure ethanol, comprising 95% ethanol and 5% water.

​It is heartening that major Indian automobile companies have stepped up to the plate with their plans to foray into the exciting world of flexible fuel vehicles. With the government planning to extend the same incentives that it extended to EV manufacturers to flexi-fuel vehicle manufacturers soon, the future for rapid adoption of such automobiles seems to be quite bright. In the meantime, it is important that the required fuel dispensing infrastructure be developed and people be made aware of the benefits of using flexible fuel vehicles, also known as FFVs.

​Making a move to an ethanol-blended fuel dispensation does have its critics, who argue that the fuel is not compatible with a large number of old vehicles used in the country. Then there is the whole argument about the diversion of food crops like rice and maize towards ethanol production, which might impact the hard-fought-for food security of the nation. Other possible problems could be in the shape of using sugarcane and other water-intensive crops in the manufacturing of ethanol.

​However, given the vastness of India and the natural resources it possesses, these are not deal breakers, and solutions can be worked out that adequately address these concerns. India’s tryst with ethanol has been a fruitful one, and continuing down this path will help the nation secure its energy needs for all times to come.

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