There is a lot of conversation today around Artificial Intelligence (AI) and whether it will in fact take over our jobs, leaving us without an inherent sense of purpose or direction. With Facebook announcing they have created a chatbot that invented its own language and grammar system, some are wondering if it's only a matter of time before AI can replace jobs in a non-traditional space such as marketing.

The reason why we are raising the big question around marketing with AI stems largely from the fact that marketing as a function generally relies on large customer sets. Marketing often involves taking a data set of customer and extrapolating reporting and analytics from that data set. With social media creating what is essentially the largest dataset ever assembled, and companies such as Google gathering extraordinarily large amounts of data on a single person, it may be seen as only a matter of time before marketing decisions start to enter into the corporate world via some kind of AI.

So without making a joke of this quite touchy subject in some circles, the Simpsons quote does represent a very real dilemma in modern society. If things keep changing, do we try and resist this change or simply go with the flow? If modern AI really is set to make us so fearful of the security of our role, do we need to try and make ourselves more relevant in the workplace?

No matter which way technology seems to go, it is almost inevitable that human beings will have some form of AI in their day to day lives. Marketing aside, manufacturing jobs have already seemed to adapt substantially to this shift to robotics, so why not apply the same logic to marketing.

AI will almost certainly take out the data side of marketing in the near future, and may even create some fantastic new ways to create an advantage in the marketplace. I’d hate to use another pop culture reference but the Marvel hero Iron Man doesn’t fly just because of his nifty suit, but because of the AI that is there to work with him.

AI will most likely not take the third, and most important part of marketing, instinct. Almost every marketing role requires some form of instinct to judge what to do with information during a discussion. Great marketing and great products existed long before AI, so there is no reason why AI would affect this part of any role. There is only so much insight a data set can tell you, but knowing the market on instinct, and experience can give us an edge that nobody can predict.

One great example of this comes the film “The Big Short”, about the global financial crisis. In the film, Steve Carell’s character Mark Baum is speaking to a real estate agent about the strength of the mortgages he is providing, to which the real estate agent nonchalantly replies “anyone can get one”. Mark immediately recognises the inherent danger in the market. AI would most likely never pick up on the subtlety of a human conversation, and as humans are after all the progenitors of AI, it would probably make sense to

The answer is a resounding no. AI will most likely take over the part of your role that involves sifting through data, reporting and analytics. What AI won’t take over is insights. One of the biggest things AI startups reiterate is that they put the human back into human work. AI will replace those tasks that are repetitive and menial, which means employees can upskill and spend their time on more complex issues.