What is so exciting about Artificial Intelligence (AI) and primarily its role in machine learning for marketing purposes?. I first heard of machine learning in 2018 while attending a statistics class for my graduate studies.
What makes anyone want to spend so much time sitting behind a computer playing games?. Why would anyone spend time playing board games for long hours, days, and even years? I wonder how people can earn a living by playing games like Chase, or more so AlphaGo.
Well, I only heard of AlphaGo in 2020 when I stumbled upon its movie documentary on YouTube. The research company DeepMind was exploring the capacity that Alpha Go has in regenerating AI. My first thought was, “what is all the buzz about this crazy huge board game?”. I was interested in watching a bit of the movie AlphaGo, but it turned out to be very captivating to see a computer going head to head with a human being “Lee Sedol” the world champion of AlphaGo.
“Virtual environments and games are thought to be the perfect platform for the development and testing of AI algorithms.” These are the words of Demis Hassabis, the co-founder and CEO of DeepMind.
Now back to the basics of what this fuss is all about. It finally dawned on me that all these people, playing such board games all over the world were merely contributing to building the intelligence of Artificial machine learning systems, which we currently have been using in the world on a large scale.
AI is used for predictions in the business world. In this era, companies are taking huge financial risks to invest in their products and services with the expectation of obtaining better profitability. While using advanced systems developed when researching the extensive boundaries of board games like AlphaGo, the computer has learnt, and come up with a paradigm that has been tested and can predict human buying patterns.
When these patterns are implemented into various models of the marketing platforms of a company’s research, they can result in accurate probabilities of the outcome for specific product brands and services.
Companies developing Artificial Intelligence systems can sell their software to social media platforms such as Google, Facebook, Instagram, Pinterest, and Twitter. These systems enable organizations to predict the buying patterns of individual users.
In the AlphaGo movie documentary, they explained how the system has been designed around three basic platforms. The first being the policy network, which has high levels to imitate players. This is the function where a machine can keep an account and document previous experiences, trends, and patterns that humans have used and replicate them.
The second platform is the Value network, where the machine learns the probability of winning in a certain position. Now can you imagine how valuable this point would be when any company can predict the best product to launch and release it at the best time and to the most accurate audience who will then respond by purchasing it? These are the expectations that AI through the use of machine learning and what it seeks to achieve.
The third and final platform explained was the Tree search. This is the ability to get the machine to predict the future outcome of any action. Social media platforms using machine learning software to address consumer needs can provide users with relevant information.
For instance, adverts with products that suit individual patterns of life that are sent out to influence buyer decisions can result in the fulfillment for both the buyer and seller through the use of AI influenced process.
Essentially, if companies can combine all these three points seamlessly, the results would lead to a positive win in their marketing strategies. For another interesting insight on how companies can gain some basic insight of AI in Marketing, read my article on how SEO Marketing can benefit your brand.