Katie King: Understanding the potential of artificial intelligence

On this episode of Better Business Outcomes, Stephen Waddington from Wadds Inc. welcomes Katie King, the CEO of AI in Business.

They discuss:

·       The potential of artificial intelligence as a tool to support marketing and public relations activity

·       The risk issues that business leaders should be concerned about in thinking about data and the application of AI 

·       The UK as a centre of excellence for the development of AI and an understanding of its impact on culture and society

·       The division of labour between people and machines

·       How to embrace and learn about the application and potential of AI and build skills for the future

·       How being tenacious and making things happen leads to Better Business Outcomes

Presented by Sarah Waddington and Stephen Waddington

For more information visit https://www.wadds.co.uk/
With thanks to our production partners at What Goes On Media

Transcript

Stephen Waddington:

Welcome to Better Business Outcomes, where we discuss how good communication can transform and grow organisations with a series of global leaders who have set the standard for what great looks like.
 
 

I’m Stephen Waddington from Wadds Inc. In this podcast you’ll hear from leaders and senior communicators about their leadership journey and how they create social impact.
 
 

You’ll also understand the areas you should be focusing on to build personal and organisational resilience, find out how public relations can unlock value for your business and enjoy a great listen along the way.

Today I’m joined by Katie King. She's the CEO of AI in Business, a Member of the All-Party Parliamentary Group Taskforce on AI, and the author of AI Strategy for Sales and Marketing: Connecting Marketing, Sales and Customer Experience.

Katie, you've always been an advocate for AI in supporting human endeavor. ‘The robots won't take our jobs’ you say as much as support decision making and, and planning. What's your basis for that assertions and, and we just spoke off camera that you've been looking at this market for nearly 10 years now, so I'm interested to hear what you think.

Katie King:

Great question to start us off Steven. So loads of stats, but one I like to regularly look at and refer to is the World Economic Forum. And what their data says is that AI will create more jobs than it eliminates. And that really makes quite a lot of sense. If you think of, and I'm even thinking back to the worlds of social media and how digital exploded, and it's the same with AI. So, you know, we've got these job titles that didn't exist 10 years ago, AI Engineers and Data Annotators and AI Humanising Linguists and Automation Managers and all of those types of things. So, you know, they're, what AI is, is creating. So we don't yet know what's coming, but we do know that many jobs will be decreasing in demand, but there's a figure of a round-about, a plus of 12 million net, you know, of growth. So for me, that's one of the big stats.

Stephen Waddington:

Let's specifically look then at some of the work that might be displaced. You have four in your book you say AI removes the dirty, the dull the dross and the dangerous work from the professional sphere. What do you mean by that? I'm thinking particularly about, you know, the area I work in in marketing and pr. What do you think we might see displaced by AI?

Katie King:

I'd say the biggest is the dull and dull perhaps is not quite as accurate for what we do. I'm in the same world as you, but the monotonous, the, the areas that can be easily automated and, you know, we're all different. So what I find dull and routine, you know, you might find much more exciting. But I think what we are saying is that AI can take away some of those routine areas. Some things that might be about trends and updating databases and writing reports and following up, you know, certain leads and so on. And the AI can take away some of that tedious work for marketing PR professionals, comms professionals. It can do the same for, you know, for legal professionals that might be having to do, you know, time sheets. Same for us too. So I think the AI can crunch the data and automate reports and fill it with maybe 60, 70% of content that we can then go in and overlay and make it extremely relevant and valuable and add out insights to it and so on.

Stephen Waddington:

Okay. Thinking about that data set and, and one of the things that's struck me here is potentially the risk issues around, and this is with GPT3 tools coming to the fore over the last couple of weeks. You know, I, I've used GPT3 to do, to create statements and do really smart things in terms of writing short form content, but then I asked it to write a bio for myself. The first paragraph, it looked like it had come out of from Wikipedia, but every everything else was a complete fiction. And presumably that's because of, of the, the limitations of the training set, the training data set. Have you thought about the risk issues for business leaders and what they should be thinking about in applying AI to their businesses?

Katie King:

Definitely. And what you're referring to, there are some of the big ethical issues, you know, that are a major concern in any kind of technological advancement. But I think what we're saying here is that improper use of the technology and the data by poorly trained algorithms could have a major, you know, negative impact. 

It's the, it's the idea of garbage in garbage out. We do need to ensure that the data that we train the algorithms on isn't inherently biased, you know, and if that refers to people hiring and saying ‘Stephen is an excellent candidate and we're going to train the data to look at more candidates like him’ than, you know, white male. It's missing all kinds of, you know, demographics and types of people that you know, fit that organisation. What does good look like and is it diverse and inclusive? And let's make sure that we, you know, that we train the data to do that. 

And you know, that's one example. If we then moved onto another that might be to do with, you know, facial recognition in law enforcement. You know, the same kind of thing happened there with, you know, racial profiling. So the technologies are well-intentioned typically, but if they aren't trained and given the right data and if they don't have oversight, you know, human oversight, then they could become harmful.

Stephen Waddington:

How are organizations dealing with precisely those issues from a risk and ethical perspective? Is this another area where you're seeing new roles created? 

Katie King:

Definitely, Yeah. So AI ethics advisors, you know, are increasingly a title, job title I'm seeing on LinkedIn. I'd still say though, to be fair, Stephen, it it's quite early days and people, you know, around the world, different legal jurisdictions, we had the same problem with social media laws catching up with the technology. You know, not everybody has their ducks in a row. Not everybody has the regulations in place. Not everyone or every country or every sector is enforcing it. So there's still quite a way to go to make sure that, you know, we don't have to be debating this. It's still in situ, it's still being planned.

Stephen Waddington:

Over the last, I, I suppose, you know, as, as long as you've been working in this market over the last seven to 10 years, we seem to have been through this Gartner hype cycle of, of excitement and disillusionment and then hype for AI tools. And I suppose some of that lies with the vendors in, in terms of trying to push and flog their products. Some of it - the technology just isn't ready for mass use, I guess.

Where do you think we are in the current lifecycle? And it's interesting, we're speaking with GPT3 dataset data tools being made available in November, 2022 and really coming into the fore and their interfaces are so simple to use, right?

Katie King:

Absolutely. Yeah, absolutely. It all depends. It depends on your country, it depends on your industry sector, it depends on, you know, where, when you say we, where are, are certain companies at, and that might be that they've chosen to be a laggard rather than innovator. So for those listening that aren’t completely familiar with it, you know, we've got that innovation trigger we reached the hype of, of peak of paranoia. We then dropped down into the trough of disillusionment. And when I wrote book one in 2019, I'd say we were at the peak of it as I was researching book two, which came out last year, we'd actually dropped in some industry sectors into the trough of disillusionment. And where I'd say we're at now, again generalising a little bit, is that we've come out of that, okay, there are some people that are still disillusioned and GPT3 will take us maybe a really out of that where we are reaching, not quite reaching that plateau of productivity, but we are no longer perhaps completely disillusioned with it.

So we're somewhere between out of the disillusionment and not yet at that plateau of productivity because we need more time, we need more examples. There's still a wild west out there, you know, there are thousands of point-to-point tools that you can use that don't have the glue that stitches -everything together. Yes, you've got great strides being made now with fantastic content creation through tools like, you know GPT3, ChatGPT but you know, you've got it being used across sales and CX and research and all kinds of other areas, and I think people still don't know who to turn to. They don't know what it's gonna mean in terms of their impact on jobs. And there isn't a kind of a, the, the industry bodies that oversee and are involved in what we do aren't necessarily recommending and using it themselves and their, you know, so I think it's still quite early days in some industry sectors and you know, PR would be one of those. But overall in business, I'd say we are a little, you know, kind of out of the trough of disillusionment, people understand what it is now, people are using it and they're no longer really frightened by it, but maybe they haven't got the budget yet to invest in it fully.

Stephen Waddington:

Right. 

We last caught up in Dubai where you, you were presenting at a couple of conferences there. We’re sat here, or at least I am, I think you were in the UK today. And the UK's always led the, the world in, in computer science the last 50 years or so. 

And I wanted to ask you specifically, we've talked about global views in different markets moving at different paces, but the UK had a, the government previously had AI as one of its grand challenges. Where, where do you think the, the UK stands as a country in terms of its leadership on ai?

Katie King:

Yeah, that's a really good question. And I'm heavily involved with the all party parliamentary group a task force for how you a adopt AI in business. So I'm heavily involved in that and we hear evidence monthly in that forum from all over the world. But equally, I've been on a few embassy visits to the United Arab Emirates and as you say, I speak all around the world. So I've got quite a good sense of of, of where we're at. And I think certainly in the UK the government is, you know, leading in terms of the ethical adoption of AI. We're trying to be, you know, a barometer for that kind of, those kinds of guidelines that set what that looks like. 

But then if you look at the private sector and you think about AI investments, then we're behind, you know, we're way behind. I mean, if you think of the UK in terms of how many tech unicorns have we had, then we're up there with the top four in Europe, but we are way behind the US, China, and even India. So, you know, on the one hand we're about sort of being forward looking, investment, innovation, setting the barometer. We like to think for ethical usage, but you know, what, we are way behind in, in many other sorts of areas.

Stephen Waddington:

So we're, we understand it on develop from a philosophical point of view, but we're not developing the technology necessarily. 

And, and then what about the application? Where, where are you seeing, you know, adoption? Where, where's the bleeding edge adoption happening around the world?

Katie King:

It's hard to say. I haven't seen, again, that will depend on industry sector by industry sector. I think China and China's doing incredible work in, in education. But both China and the states, certainly as far as in financial services and retail, that's where we're seeing it. So as industry sectors go, I think retail and financial services are the two, and, and, and tech, of course, the tech sector followed closely behind those others, like financial services are where the initial investments have been in recent years and where the venture capital money has been invested and so on. And that's been the big difference. This is technology that's been around since the 1950s. And the, the two big pieces that have changed making it viable today are that there's cheaper processing power and we've got ample supply of data. So that's held us back for 50 or more years because we haven't - we've had the great minds, you know, the UK's been incredible with that from, from day one, you know, some of the great people that work at the Alan Turing Institute and in pockets of industry all over the world, but not having the cheap compute power and not having the data that's come about through the internet initially and then through smartphones, you know, has made the big difference.

Stephen Waddington:

Really interesting. 

Thinking about AI and, and the future, how, how far do you think we are from this nirvana of, of robots talking to robots without human mediation? I mean, it's, it strikes me with the latest tools, content tools that we've seen released over the last couple of months. You know, if you look specifically where we both started our careers, I think in, in media relations, in public relations industry, so much of that practice has, is if not being stripped out, being much improved by by artificial intelligence. And wh where's it going do you think? I mean, you know, I, I could use GPT3 to understand what a journalist is writing about what they're likely to, what pitch is likely to best resonate, help write that pitch, land, you know, where's it going?

Katie King:

So robot speaking to Robot as a Nirvana, I'm not sure I necessarily think of it as that. I think when I researched both books I've had, you know, great business people in, but also academics and politicians and all sorts of people, and the consensus really has been that we are very, very far from the this idea of, you know, robots taking over the world, robots being pervasive in the workplace and so on, what everybody agrees with. I mean, you could look at Ray Kurtz vile and the singularity and the, the, the thinking there, but most people I interviewed feel that that could be 25 years away. It could be 50 years away, it might never happen. So it's really hard to sort of put your finger on it and say, right, you know, this is when that will happen. 

I think we will get left behind as comms and PR professionals if we don't use AI tools. So the, you know, the, the person, the comms professional, PR professional, marketing professional who is using AI or will leave behind those that will not, that's a fact. And what we are referring to are tools that are infused with ai. They might be robot pods at an airport, they might be a tool like GPT3 that's helping us do incredible content creation. They might be some AI in Brand Watch or Frazy or Conquered or one of these other great tools out there that is enabling us to do great sales, CX, comms and so on. So I think, you know, that will be pervasive over the coming few years, you know, from now for another 1, 2, 3, 4 years. And you know, I think as PR professionals we will be much more data savvy.

It doesn't mean we'll have to be technologists. So you and I have kind of cut our teeth on technology PR, but we're not technologists. We know how to use, use technology tools, and I think all comms and PR and marketing professionals will need to use comm's tools really, really well. But I don't think jump forward five years that we're all gonna have robots walking around the office talking to one another. But we will use tools where the AI is behind the scenes and by then we won't care that it's ai. We will just use tools like we've used Tweet deck, Hootsuite, you know, and other SaaS tools for the last 10 or 15 years.

Stephen Waddington:

I want to ask you about your own research and your own learning and development. I think I've cracked your codex. Tell me if this is true. So, through both books, it strikes me that you immerse yourself completely in the subject. You read as much as you possibly can. You meet as many people as you can, you travel and then you absorb and abstract that information is there's that and, and that re results in your book, is that your, your writing process?

Katie King:

Yes. Spot on. So I absorb, I analyze, I layer over that my own methodologies, but I quote lots of top people so I don't just travel and see them and then write it up myself. You know, the books are packed with case studies of those people and their insights and so on. But what I don't just then do is leave it at that. I layer on to each chapter takeaways and methodologies and ways that, you know, advice for moving forward. So then management books about how you apply AI to business in particular to sales, marketing, and customer experience.

Stephen Waddington:

I think that critical thinking's really important as, as you say, you frame everything in business context now. Not everyone is as lucky as Katie King to have that approach. Katie, what, what do you recommend, you know, the standard practitioner does to develop the skills in, in this area? What can they learn from you?

Katie King:

Yeah, I think being on a journey of continuous learning is so crucial. My dad instilled that in me as a kid. You know, I grew up on the 11th floor of a council flat in Tottenham. And today I'm in a very different place. And so remaining humble, being very aware of what you know and what you don't know, you know, book two had to be written because book one would've been out of date. I'm having to now think about book three. So determination, openness, forget this concept of imposter syndrome. It's absolute rubbish. You don't need it. Go out there, be tenacious, make things happen. You know, just be in control of your destiny by, by asking for people's input, by reading a lot, by researching, listening to great people like Stephen, finding who the movers and shakers are in the industry. We are so lucky. We've got everything at our fingertips. So I think that open mindedness, combined with that tenacity are two really crucial attributes that anybody can have.

Stephen Waddington:

My final question, and we ask everyone this as a wrap to, to these interviews. The headline, the podcast is Better Business Outcomes. Katie, what's the one thing you think leads to better business outcomes?

Katie King:

Having the customer or client at the center of what you do, I think is really important because, you know, you need to know why you are different, why you are good, why you are better than the competition, what you offer your client, why they stay with you, how you can retain them. And so having knowledge of them and their needs and how you can satisfy their needs better than what might be coming down the line. So that's really, really important. 

So two things, that's one that client or customer centricity. Then the second is, what are you in business for? You know, and I'm being completely honest, I just turned 56 last week and so I guess I'm saying this with purpose, you know, remain motivated all the way through your career, even when you're getting old like me. By understanding what, what are you doing it for?

What are we doing it for? What are we there for? And and I don't just mean Simon Sinek, why? I mean, you know, giving back and doing things for some legacy and understanding, you know, it's not all about making money, you know, is there something you can do? And I run the leaders of tomorrow in Tech schools program and do you know what, without sounding really cynical. I did it with great good intentions of, of helping young people get on the ladder and understand how AI is going to reshape their careers. But my god, it's opening up so many doors for me. So I think when you've got that hat on of purpose and legacy and what we're all here for and you know, community - things come from it!

Stephen Waddington:

What a brilliant answer. Love it. Two answers, but love them both Thank you very much Katie.

Katie King:

Thank you for a great interview, Steven. Thanks.

Stephen Waddington:

Well, that the perfect wrap to today’s Better Business Outcomes podcast. Thanks to Katie King for joining me. Please don’t forget to subscribe wherever you usually find your podcasts and if you enjoy what you hear, please also leave us a review.

See you next time.