Artificial Intelligence, Market Research and the Financial Times
This weekend's issue of the Financial Times dedicates a number of high profile articles to Artificial Intelligence - the topic that many leaders in MR see as the driving force for our own humble industry for the coming 12 months and beyond.
What can we learn from the top of the tree? Three aspects.
1. First up: The FT Lunch (http://on.ft.com/2AXQ5Bz) is with Ray Dalio, the billionaire head of Bridgewater Capital, one of the world's largest hedgefunds. Mid-way through he states emphatically:
"You can convert whatever you are thinking into an algorithm". Yikes.
Coming from someone so successful - Bridgewater successfully navigated the financial meltdown of 2008/9 - it's the sort of sentence business leaders will listen to, and likely believe, act on, investing more in automation/ AI/ digital transformation throughout the value chain.
And for MR - do we need to assume that data scientists will take over our industry? The narrative is strongly in favour. However, in the same article, Mr. Dalio admits he didn't expect Trump to win the last Presidential Elections. Like many others, he and his sophisticated number-crunching got it wrong.
Take out number one: there's hope for us in the business of contemporary market research, we just need to flag up our abilities to read (and to an extent predict) the complexities and subtleties of human behaviour better.
2. The second thing that caught my attention: when asked about what he thinks about Mr. Trump he states he doesn't want to say anything negative. Maybe that's understandible - but it certainly makes you wonder, as a researcher, about the unsaid, indeed how much of what he states in the article is simply for public consumption. What does he really think? Direct questioning methods take us only so far.
Second take-out: unpicking narratives and detecting possibly unstated agendas is an increasingly complex business in an era of filter bubbles and SM echo-chambers, something I would suggest a computer couldn't do well, if at all. It's something we as researchers are well placed to deliver on.
3. Thirdly and separately, the same FT contains a lengthy article about a new chess software - AlphaZero - developed by Google's artificial intelligence research arm. It's described as a breakthrough, capturing the attention of no less than Gary Kasparov.
Nevertheless, the author chooses to highlight tech overclaims, that when asked, "experts in the field of AI anticipate that the moment when computers are able to achieve a level of general intelligence to match - and then overtake - humanity, only half picked a time within the next 30 years."
My overall take-out: however excited we get, however much we read about AI in 2018 and its impact on market research, we shouldn't take our eyes off the ball. In the words of the FT: "predictions of the imminent rise of the machines have always turned out to be wildly over-optimistic".
If we take care of our outputs as we currently control them, keep the experiential aspects high, the client benefits tangible, measurable and documented, there's surely room for MR optimism in 2018.
Curious, as ever, as to other's views.