A conceptual view of Artificial Intelligence
Artificial intelligence (AI) is at work right now, even if you don’t notice it. While you’re busy creating new marketing campaigns or documenting new products and services, AI systems are busy augmenting your capabilities.
Behind the scenes, AI is working to help you understand the bigger picture by providing an always-on alert system designed to ensure recognition of patterns, trends, threats, and opportunities hidden deep in the data. Content management systems depend on this data to help improve the way content is created, managed, translated, and delivered; that is, the right content to the right people, when, where, and how they need it.
And yet, most content management systems have yet to incorporate AI-powered functionality into their products. But, that’s about to change.
Once you recognize that content is a business asset, you will see the importance of leveraging every ounce of value from each dollar that is spent developing it. But, recognizing a need—and tackling it—are two very different things.
When ready to take action, you’ll likely find yourself in need of a digital transformation; a profound evolution of business activities, (including all things related to producing content) designed to help meet the fast-changing, technology-fueled needs of today, while simultaneously preparing your organization for changes coming tomorrow. AI is certainly going to be part of the mix.
Today, AI is in use in content production departments around the globe. It helps financial service companies automatically generate content that adheres to U.S. government regulations. AI helps news organizations (like the Associated Press) make corporate earnings reports on demand, and at scale, much faster—and more consistently—than its business reporters can. And it helps small businesses compete with much larger competitors by helping them develop capabilities previously limited to Fortune 500 companies.
AI also plays a significant role in content distribution and delivery. Today, with a few commands from the keyboard, intelligent agents can be put to work on your behalf. Intelligent agents can be instructed to generate a website, publish content simultaneously—and at the right time and to the right people—to multiple social media outlets, and provide predictive analytics designed to create relevant content of value to prospects and customers.
As AI matures, expect it to expand into other areas of the content lifecycle. For instance, your content management system can be fed insights generated from predictive analytics that can help guide conversations with customers. AI will serve up content designed to steer your prospects toward relevant content, product, and service offerings.
One of the promises AI will deliver is improvements to content management over time. As machines learn, they adapt and become smarter. AI will enforce the rules set in place to govern the creation, management, translation, and delivery of content. AI-enabled content management systems will identify threats (like incongruent content, bad links, security concerns) and help prevent violations of conventions, rules, regulations, and laws. Properly tuned, AI-augmented content management systems will help spot opportunities to produce new content and assist in determining whether the content created delivers the value expected. Education, business, and government will all benefit from AI-powered content personalization.
The future of artificial intelligence is uncertain in many ways, but one forecast remains clear—all worldwide industries, governments, employees, and retail consumers will be affected.
There exist doomsayers, such as Elon Musk of Tesla, who says he believes that artificial intelligence poses an “existential threat to human civilization”. Some technology leaders are more optimistic, like Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg, who says artificial intelligence applications will help businesses “build things” that make the world “better.” Zuckerberg says AI promises—over the next 5 to 10 years—to help us develop new operational models.
While I understand the need to be aware of the dangers, I believe harnessing the power of AI cooperatively through partnerships with Fortune 500 companies is our best strategy. An example would be the recent deal announced by AT&T and Oracle that combines AI technology and data analytics to improve AT&T’s field service technician’s workflow—problem discovery, solution efficiency, and overall customer experience. When scheduling an appointment with a telephone installation technician, imagine being given a firm appointment time, rather than a 4-hour appointment time window. This same strategy could be deployed in the content world to build an AI-enabled Component Content Management System with content creation, quality, translation, and distribution interacting in real time.
My advice: Learn everything you can about AI. Seek out opportunities to become involved in projects, both at work and in your free time. In a world in which machine-ready content will play a critical role in your remaining relevant, it’s best to stay ahead of the AI curve.