Artificial Intelligence for Marketing

CHAPTER 11What Tomorrow May Bring

One of the things that really separate us from the high primates is that we're tool builders. I read a study that measured the efficiency of locomotion for various species on the planet…. Humans came in with a rather unimpressive showing, about a third of the way down the list, but somebody at Scientific American had the insight to test the efficiency of locomotion for a man on a bicycle…. A human on a bicycle blew the condor away, completely off the top of the charts. And that's what a computer is to me…it's the most remarkable tool that we've ever come up with; it's the equivalent of a bicycle for our minds.

Steve Jobs

You now understand the underlying technology of what AI looks like in real life. You now understand how machine learning works. You understand that it's nice that American Express is tapping spend histories and personal profile data to train a model to make restaurant recommendations. That's a lot of technology for a minor value to the customer. But it has great value to AmEx, which is using it as a learning opportunity. What's not clear is how all these pieces fit together.

I can promise you this: Anything with electricity will be connected to the Internet and anything that can be connected to the Internet will be connected to AI systems.

• Your watch
• Your flashlight
• Your clock
• Your toaster
• Your shoes
• Your shirt
• Your glasses
• Your rug

Why will your rug have a battery? I'm looking toward yet another college dorm room breakthrough ...