According to the market intelligence company IDC, the global artificial intelligence market is expected to reach half a trillion US dollars by 2024. At the same time, economists of the World Economic Forum predict that several tens of millions of jobs will be lost by 2025 as a result of the development of artificial intelligence. Is the development of technology to be feared and how to “make friends” with artificial intelligence?
The co-founder and strategist of the communication agency MATCH – Anita Pokrovska – talks about her experience in using artificial intelligence tools at a time when every sphere of business is ravaged by rapid changes.
I was nine years old when my parents decided to connect our apartment to the Internet. The ability to enter any address and be transported into virtual space completely changed my perception of life. The only thought in my head was “I don't know how it works, but I this is what I want to do with my life”.
Anita PokrovskaHead of the MATCH Agency
In high school, I studied in a STEM class, but I decided to enter the Faculty of Social Sciences of the University of Latvia – during my professional career, I have always tried to combine STEM with social sciences. These efforts culminated in the opening of MATCH, a full-service digital communication agency. We bring together products with consumers by using diverse combinations of modern digital marketing tools – content marketing, performance marketing, lead generation systems, influencer marketing – everything depends on the situation and the set goals.
The pandemic of 2020 and the subsequent revolution of artificial intelligence tools have seriously changed the approach to traditional marketing – currently we use artificial intelligence tools not only in our own work – we also consult other companies on the implementation of these tools in various processes, automating the operations of marketing and sales departments.
Observation 1. The pandemic served as a stimulus to re-evaluate the importance of corporate culture and soft skills
AI tools are not new – the only thing that has changed is the access to them. Even during the pandemic these tools were used to predict future waves of Covid and other potential developments. And our communication agency was also founded at the same time as the first wave of the pandemic in 2020 – at least two years before artificial intelligence tools became as widely popular as they are now.
The pandemic has forced the rigid corporate culture to quickly adapt to new conditions and get rid of the remnants of the “9 to 5” philosophy.
Therefore, it is very symbolic that our first client was MŪKU SALA, a business centre representing the commercial real estate industry, and at that time felt the effects of lockdown more than other businesses. It was this project that later became the calling card of our agency
In an industry with very stiff competition, we managed to create a close-knit community around this brand and increase the number of citations in the media tenfold. Moreover, we see that this strategy is paying off, as 85% of the upcoming building of ZEISS OFFICES, which is currently being added to the business centre, were occupied several months before the construction work was even completed.
Together with MŪKU SALA, we have reassessed the value of office spaces and their impact on work – during the three years our agency has been active, we have changed office spaces along with the format of work process management within the company four times, until we have finally found the most suitable one for us. In both client projects and company management, unsuccessful approaches are immediately discontinued, while the successful ones have served as the basis for new hypotheses. Most likely, such an agile approach has also helped us survive one change after another.
Observation 2: Artificial intelligence is not a specialist – it is a specialist’s tool
When OpenAI introduced the world to ChatGPT in late 2022, gaining 57 million active users in its first month of availability, we immediately began experimenting with the tools that were available to regular users. Now our calls with clients and partners are transcribed by an artificial intelligence protocolist – after each call, we receive a full transcript of the conversation, the main points of discussion and a summary within a few seconds. Separately, the AI records what percentage of the conversation each speaker has taken and even evaluates the intonation of the dialogue.
The rapid development of artificial intelligence has made it possible to significantly improve the productivity of the strategic projects department – if before, when developing communication strategies, it took our analysts up to several weeks to collect and process various data, now this time has decreased to a few days.
Artificial intelligence is also an indispensable helper for creative workers – the mechanical work that designers once did manually is now handed over to Midjourney, Dall-e and other AI tools. Instead of dealing with mainly technical problems, designers can devote time to generating new ideas and creating new and unexpected creative solutions in visual communication – these are the challenges that artificial intelligence is not yet capable of performing.
We are currently focused on exploring the possibilities offered by artificial intelligence and testing our hypotheses in practice. We recently successfully conducted an experiment in cooperation with one of our clients representing the B2B wholesale industry.
During this experiment, we trained AI to imitate the communication style of the most effective manager of the company’s sales department. Based on the obtained data, artificial intelligence developed automated message chains that were personalized for each target audience segment.
In other words, the AI “cloned” the employee using in-depth knowledge of the market, competitors, and customers, in a short time covering the amount of communication that would have taken the employee several months. When we launched such a lead generation campaign targeting several thousand potential customers, we saw a 35% increase in conversion.
This case perfectly refutes the misconception that artificial intelligence can completely replace human work – without experience in interpersonal communication and a deep understanding of the specific industry and region, without the supervision of live specialists, artificial intelligence would be able to create only superficial spam messages that would not provide any practical benefits. In this case, artificial intelligence enabled the client to be in several places at the same time.
Observation 3: The development of artificial intelligence will not take away, but will create new jobs, but it is necessary to prepare now
If initially experts predicted that 85 million jobs will be lost due to the rise of the artificial intelligence by 2025, at the same time it is predicted that 97 million new jobs will be created – jobs that will be adapted to the new division of labour between humans and algorithms. The highest demand is predicted for positions such as machine learning engineer, artificial intelligence researcher, data specialist, automation specialist and human-artificial intelligence interaction specialist.
As technology advances, jobs that are usually associated with daily routines and tasks that tend to be repetitive are handed over to machines, freeing up time and resources for more complex and creative tasks that require the so-called soft skills of critical thinking, empathy, and creativity. After the first artificial intelligence boom, ironic messages often appeared in the message boards of creative industry specialist communities: “To replace the specialist with an AI, the customers will have to explain to the AI exactly what they want. Colleagues, we are safe!”. Indeed, now that artificial intelligence can easily pass almost any test or exam, emotional intelligence will come to the fore – social skills such as the ability to recognize one’s own and others’ emotions, and the ability to manage them, will remain irreplaceable.
At MATCH
we place special emphasis on educating young people, recognizing that the modern education system is still outdated in many respects.
If initially experts predicted that 85 million jobs will be lost due to the rise of the artificial intelligence by 2025, at the same time it is predicted that 97 million new jobs will be created – jobs that will be adapted to the new division of labour between humans and algorithms. The highest demand is predicted for positions such as machine learning engineer, artificial intelligence researcher, data specialist, automation specialist and human-artificial intelligence interaction specialist.
It often focuses on memory training and recalling large amounts of data, which is certainly important, but loses its importance since AI has long surpassed humans in this aspect. In our company, we provide young marketers with an experimental environment where they learn strategic and tactical planning skills, including how to interact with artificial intelligence, giving the opportunity to immediately apply theoretical knowledge in practice. We have abandoned the standard skill testing system and prefer to develop skills that help with self-learning, concentration and teamwork. This approach has shown tangible results – all participants of our last summer program received job offers even before completing their training.
We believe that the future of education lies in EdTech and new forms of educational systems that emphasize flexibility and adaptability in the context of rapid technological development. These systems are accompanied by a new philosophy in which education is not just a one-time process of obtaining a university degree, but a continuous process of self-improvement throughout life.
