Young millennials who are going to start
their higher education studies soon might be wondering what career paths they
should focus on. And for anyone who is in touch with what is happening in the
world and future technology trends, the answer should be obvious. Artificial
Intelligence. Literally changing the way our world operates, we’re all dealing
with aspects of this tech daily and likely don’t even know it.
Moreover, a Future of Jobs in India' study,
commissioned jointly by FICCI and Nasscom with EY looks at the impact of
advanced technologies on 5 key manufacturing and services sectors in
India-IT/ITeS, retail, financial services, textile & apparel and auto-that
create the bulk of jobs. A key finding was that 9% of India's 600 million
estimated workforce would be deployed in new jobs that do not exist today,
while 37% would be in jobs that have radically changed skill sets. The future
job for the Indian millennial is one which uses Artificial Intelligence (AI).
According to Gartner, AI will create 2.3
million jobs globally and become a positive “net job motivator” by 2020. Indian
millennials need to develop at a pace that can be sustained “no matter what the
future holds.” Technology-based jobs are arriving faster than most of us can
keep up with. Despite how threatened this might make one feel, we’re very far
from Artificial Intelligence taking over all our jobs; AI still can’t do
everything a human can. AI is unlikely to completely automate all jobs in the
near future. A more likely scenario is Augmented Artificial Intelligence, where
AI works in tandem with humans, assisting them in their decision making.
In a world of Augmented AI, millennials who
are digital natives, are likely to thrive. New technologies do not intimidate
them, unlike previous generations. Millennials won’t mind waiting in queues to
get their hands on the latest phones and other gadgets. Millennials are also
the generation most likely to have knowledge about AI. One-third (33%) claim to
know a lot about Al, a rate more than twice that of Gen Xers (15%) and five
times that of Boomers (6%). Millennials’ knowledge of AI likely comes from
their personal experience with AI products; they are more likely to own or use
an AI product (32%) than Gen Xers (23%) and Boomers (11%).[1] More than other generations, millennials
engage with Siri, Alexa, and a variety of messenger bots hosted by their
favorite brands. The Indian millennials are turning to algorithms for love;
they absolutely love the idea of AI systems being able to tackle complex
problems in ways similar to human logic and reasoning.
Just about every industry and job function
needs employees with skills in AI and marketing is not an exception. Now, going
digital for brands is no longer just about having a website or email marketing;
it means that ensuring that all decisions are made backed not just by gut
instinct but by real data often analyzed using AI-based tools. The prevalence
of smartphones and tablets, along with internet penetration, has added more
power to digital AI marketing and ensured that there is more data available for
marketing professionals to analyse.
This means that the marketers of tomorrow
should be savvy enough to ensure that their AI systems have access to the right
data relating to product usage, website traffic, ad performance, marketing
demand and consumer feedback. The AI systems will need to be instructed in
terms of what the marketing objectives are, so that the right insights can be
gleaned.
Millennials also understand that using AI
in marketing will enable them to develop, implement and manage brand awareness
of the organization and its products and services in real-time. A gazillion
conversations take place every day across multiple social media platforms and
if brands want to take real-time marketing actions based on these conversations
they must invest in the right technology – and in this case, it is the right
usage of Artificial Intelligence.
Another area of significance for digital
marketing is programmatic advertising. Programmatic advertising is essentially
serving advertisements to targeted and specific users by using data. When AI is
integrated into the process, programmatic ad placement can only get better.
The job of a millennial marketer has
evolved over the years and now involves to learning to work in tandem with
Artificial Intelligence-based tools. Aspiring millennials can look for courses
on platforms like Udemy, Udacity and Coursera on subjects like social media
monitoring and listening, programmatic advertising, web analytics and app
analytics.
