Marketing 0

REFLECTION QUESTIONS
Think about how you would leverage contextual marketing
technology in your organization. What are some of the
opportunities to apply a combination of IoT and AI?
Explore ways for you to personalize your marketing
approach based on your real-time understanding of the
customers.

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CHAPTER 11
Augmented Marketing: Delivering
Tech-Empowered Human Interaction
One of the major headlines in the late 1990s was the chess games
between IBM's Deep Blue and Grandmaster Garry Kasparov as the
quintessential man-versus-machine matchup. In 1997, the
supercomputer eventually became the first machine to beat a
reigning world champion in a chess game. Although a year prior,
Kasparov had won the first match, the defeat became all the buzz in
the chess world and beyond.
Many experts attributed the win as a sign of the machine's superior
intelligence. Deep Blue could process 200 million positions per
second at the time, much faster than any human could. Kasparov
himself admitted his uncertainty about Deep Blue's capability during
the game. With a human opponent, it was more predictable as he
could read their facial expression and body language.
In the aftermath, many chess players, including Kasparov, were
curious whether they could augment their playing ability with a
computer on their side. It led to a form of competition known as the
advanced or freestyle chess, in which human players can consult with
machines before deciding their every move. A breakthrough insight
was revealed in 2005, where in a tournament with grandmasters and
supercomputers participating, the winner turned out to be two
amateur chess players, Steven Cramton and Zackary Stephen,
assisted by three regular computers (Team ZackS).
Leading to the final, several grandmasters with help from computers
had defeated most supercomputer competitors. The only exception
was Team ZackS, who had also defeated some supercomputers along
the way. In the final, Team ZackS won against a team of
grandmasters and the supporting computers. The amateur players
had taught their machines better than any grandmaster or any self-
learning computer.

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The story is often cited as proof that human–machine collaboration
is always better than either a human expert or a powerful machine.
The key is to find the best symbiosis between the two. Today,
supercomputers are nowhere near replicating the highly nuanced
human intelligence, and the dream of artificial general intelligence
(AGI) is still far from being realized (see 
Chapter 6
). But computers
have been excellent at taking over specific functions from humans.
Instead of building machines that are capable of doing everything,
technologists focus on developing several narrow AI applications
where machines outperform humans.
Knowing precisely what and how to teach computers will enable
human coaches to realize their full potential. This premise leads to a
technology development movement known as intelligence
amplification (IA). As opposed to artificial intelligence (AI), which
aims to replicate human intelligence, IA seeks to augment human
intelligence with technology. In IA, humans remain the ones making
decisions, albeit supported by robust computational analysis.
In marketing, the application of IA makes perfect sense in areas
where humans are still dominant and computers can only become
the support systems. Thus, augmented marketing focuses on
marketing activities that heavily involve human-to-human interfaces,
such as selling and customer service. In these human resources–
intensive jobs, the role of technology is to increase productivity by
taking over low-value tasks and helping humans make smarter
decisions.