← Back
The Advent of AI: Merging Human Potential with Machine Intelligence
By Kevin Rohling,Emily Giddings
August 23, 2023

Artificial Intelligence has the potential to revolutionize software development, business, marketing, and even our personal lives. As the Head of AI at Presence, Kevin Rohling, and Marketing Manager, Emily Giddings, discussed in their joint presentation for Work & Co’s Global Tech Week, AI is actively changing application development, marketing strategies, and our concepts of creative value. By embracing and adapting, we can set ourselves up for more successful professional and personal futures.

AI in Software Development

In the constantly evolving field of software development, AI has the potential to democratize application creation, making it accessible to all. Our current coding process may transition to training AI models to obtain desired results, utilizing data sets and GPUs for traditional AI and machine learning training. Language models are becoming adept at handling “app-like” functionality, such as validation and database lookups, radically simplifying the development process.

A significant shift towards a hybrid approach to collaboration may occur where AI systems handle tasks typically done through hand coding and API templates. Combining traditional deterministic software systems, those with highly predictable outputs, while AI will provide optimal solutions for complex tasks. However, the safeguarding of AI systems and human involvement remains crucial to ensure consistency and reliability in critical tasks.

Transforming User Interfaces

AI is likely to play an essential role in front-end development, particularly in creating user interfaces. As AI systems become more sophisticated, they will collaborate with humans to streamline the design process. AI will handle routine tasks, freeing up developers to explore a vast space of previously unconceived user interface possibilities while also providing creative vision and ethical judgment.

Adaptive interfaces will further revolutionize the user experience, generating on-demand UIs based on user intent, personal preferences, and accessibility needs. AI's ability to provide real-time adaptive interaction will accommodate a diverse range of user requirements across various devices.

Redefining Marketing and Communication

AI technology is shifting the landscape of many professions that rely on technology, including marketing. New AI marketing tools can write posts, entire blogs, landing pages, and generate hundreds of SEO-targeted articles to flood Google. What was rare and valuable has become commoditized; therefore, traditional top-of-funnel tactics will change. In an industry led by uniqueness and personalization, marketers must look beyond the AI-generated SEO-optimized and mass-produced copy, to drive meaningful differentiation, acquisition, engagement, and retention. 

Attribution will also change. Notoriously tricky to calculate, it will become even more complex to calculate as privacy policies advance. Facial sentiment analysis captured from mobile and desktop devices will come into play as a new, more reliable attribution data point. As this technology becomes widespread, ethical development will be key to drawing the line between persuasion and manipulation. 

Elevating Creativity

Once thought to be strictly human, impressive creative works are now being produced through artificial intelligence. Creative work results from information and novel combinations, which AI can easily produce. Instead of relegating creative work to AI tools, there is still immense value in human creativity and critical thinking. After all, it was the human mind that conceived of and built artificial intelligence. In a future where AI is superior at repetitive and precise tasks, it makes sense to prioritize the development of creative and uniquely human soft skills, such as relationship building, complex planning, creative iteration, and strategic thinking. 

The Hero's Journey with AI

The AI Revolution is here, and will dramatically shape our professional, technological, and personal futures. It will both fundamentally change work and help us do better work. Instead of giving up our uniquely human capabilities and soft skills, we should engage them more deeply as we approach our AI-era Hero’s Journey of change, advancement, and even personal growth. Those who navigate these changes the best will embrace AI technology with the same passion they give to developing their humanity. The advent of AI offers both exciting and challenging prospects for our future. By adopting innovative AI technologies in our professions and elevating our soft skills, we can create a world that balances the best of both human creativity and machine intelligence.