Creative Next: AI Automation at Work

How are marketing agencies adapting to smartware and emerging technologies? Tiny Giant co-founder Kerry Harrison joins Dirk and Jon to share her perspective, including explorations in techs such as chatbots and neural networks.

Kerry Harrison, a co-founder of Bristol, U.K. marketing agency Tiny Giant, joins Dirk and Jon to talk about the work her firm is in areas such as AI, chatbots, and neural networks. A veteran marketing professional, Kerry also shares her thoughtful take on the future of agencies, how marketing and emerging technologies can synergize, and what marketers need to do in order to adapt to the changing face of future technology.

Memorable Quotes

"AIs will help dictate when to begin and end campaigns. Even the mix of content we create and also even the type of imagery we're using. And we'll also see AI begin to automate the timing and delivering of messaging. But technology such as like AI will also give us a new ability to measure as well."

"Outside of marketing of course, creative thinking skills are going to be needed to provide innovative solutions to some of the world's biggest problems."

"So whether your advertising or marketing promotes joy or whether it pulls at the heartstrings or whether it surprises people, or even if it enrages them, it just needs to make people feel something. And then I think if you don't feel anything, you don't do anything."

"Gartner predicted that 25% of customer service and support operations will use some form of chatbot technology by 2020 which was up from 2% in 2017."

"There's been a lot said recently about the death of advertising agencies, but I still feel there's a very much a place for agencies."

Who You'll Hear

Dirk Knemeyer, Social Futurist and Producer of Creative Next (@dknemeyer)

Jonathan Follett, Writer, Electronic Musician, Emerging Tech Researcher and Producer of Creative Next (@jonfollett)

Kerry Harrison, Co-Founder of Tiny Giant (@copywriterkerry)

Join The Conversation

Website & Newsletter: www.creativenext.org

Twitter: @GoCreativeNext

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Sponsors

GoInvo, A design practice dedicated to innovation in healthcare whose clients are as varied as AstraZeneca, 3M Health Information Services, and the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. www.goinvo.com

Design Museum Foundation, A new kind of museum, they believe design can change the world. They’re online, nomadic, and focused on making design accessible to everyone. Their mission: bring the transformative power of design everywhere. You can learn about their exhibitions, events, magazine, and more. www.designmuseumfoundation.org

BIF, As a purpose-driven firm, BIF is committed to bringing design strategy where it is needed most - health care, education, and public service to create value for our most vulnerable populations. www.bif.is

Musical composition is one of the earliest examples of human art and creativity. Today, new and original music is increasingly being composed by AI. Drew Silverstein, Co-Founder and CEO of Amper Music, joins the show.

Automation of sound and music, in the form of licensing stock and pre-existing recordings, is a decades-old trend that became ubiquitous with the rise of the internet. Now, thanks to machine learning and artificial intelligence, the creation of original music is increasingly being automated. Drew Silverstein, one of the pioneers at the forefront of this trend, joins the Creative Next team to explore these technologies and the trends and impacts they have on work in general and musicians in particular.

Memorable Quotes

“As our technology evolves, we see AI dramatically decreasing the cost of accomplishing certain tasks and dramatically decreasing the amount of information that any one person needs to know to be successful at that task. And whether it's music, whether it's farming, whether it's creating a script, or whether it's just doing more rote business tasks, and I think what we are going to arrive at in the not too distant future, is a world in which the ability to complete a task is fully democratized and anyone can do nearly anything with the assistance of an AI.”

“The value, then, of our human input is gonna be on the creative input and the creative direction, so that, as people, how can we direct the workforce and the work effort of these machines to do something that's meaningful to us.”

“All you need to know to create unique and professional music tailored to your content are three things: the style of music you want to create, the mood you want to convey and the length of your piece of music and that's all you know. In a matter of seconds, you'll make something brand new.”

“We think our job is just a matter of tasks in a sequence that accomplish something specific that they get a goal done, whereas our career is all about helping others achieve their goals, and the manner in which we do that will change. We used to communicate via written letters only, and then it became telegraphs, and then it became phone calls, and then it became email. Now it's texts. We're still communicating. We're still conveying messages, but how we do that will change. And in the same way, in music, the jobs of the music world that exist today will certainly evolve and be very different in a matter of years, in the same way that they're very different now than they were 10 years ago.”

“So what I would say to those, both coming up in music, and those who are already successful and experienced, is to understand that technologies evolve. The way we do things will change. Be accepting of that. Be on the forefront of the adoption of those new technologies and their tools, but also be mindful at the core value in music. It's not because of the process by which it's made. It's because we're making art and people value art.”

“Whether or not we exist as a company, this is happening. AI music is here.”

“And then we said to ourselves, ‘As composers, we are experts at translating music into emotion and emotion into music.’ And so we suggested, ‘What if we could create a creative AI that gives you the same collaborative experience of working with us, but within the time and economic framework that you need?’”

“And with each evolution in technology, the barriers to expressing oneself creatively through music were dramatically decreased, the time it takes to learn to express oneself and the cost of purchasing the tools to do so. And in that manner, we see AI music and Amper as the next step in this centuries long, if not longer, progression of technological innovation democratizing creative abilities.”

Who You'll Hear

Dirk Knemeyer, Social Futurist and Producer of Creative Next (@dknemeyer)

Jonathan Follett, Writer, Electronic Musician, Emerging Tech Researcher and Producer of Creative Next (@jonfollett)

Drew Silverstein, Co-Founder & CEO, Amper Music

Join The Conversation

Website & Newsletter: www.creativenext.org

Twitter: @GoCreativeNext

Facebook: /GoCreativeNext

Instagram: @GoCreativeNext

Sponsors

GoInvo, A design practice dedicated to innovation in healthcare whose clients are as varied as AstraZeneca, 3M Health Information Services, and the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. www.goinvo.com

Design Museum Foundation, A new kind of museum, they believe design can change the world. They’re online, nomadic, and focused on making design accessible to everyone. Their mission: bring the transformative power of design everywhere. You can learn about their exhibitions, events, magazine, and more. www.designmuseumfoundation.org

BIF, As a purpose-driven fi...

The impact of AI and other emerging technologies is of great interest to artists, who translate that interest into insights about where the world is heading. Transmedia artist Stephanie Dinkins shares her work and insights.

We go through our lives, ubiquitously using technologies like Alexa and Netflix, without critically thinking about the impacts that machine learning and other emerging technologies have on today and tomorrow. Stephanie’s art, as well as live event projects that create dialog and participation from experts and every citizens alike, strive to make us aware of and active in how we think about and engage with our technology - being particularly mindful about issues of representation, bias, and empowerment.

Memorable Quotes

“Not The Only One is talking a lot about ‘the would be’. So if you ask it a question it will say, ‘Take it to the would be.’ And I always marvel at that, because it seems to be offering this idea that you take it to this thing that I'm not quite sure what it's talking about, but the advice feels sound, and also feels in line with the way that my family and ancestors might answer that question.”

“If this is one example of this technology, are there others that represent people of color in a way? Are there others that represent different cultures and attitudes in different ways? How are they programmed, and what does this mean for the world?”

“She is a system that is representationally one thing, but perhaps is informed by coders who are not completely in line what her representation might be.”

“I've been able to step into this arena, learn by doing, and then have a voice in terms of trying to get people to think about ideas of bias and equity and ethical thinking and inclusion in the AI sphere.”

“And long run, really being involved in the making of the systems so that at least there are a multitude of different ways of being and ways of existing in the world, to start questioning how the system are working, what data they're based on, and bringing up why that might be a problem.”

“Not The Only One is my attempt at making a memoir of my family through artificial intelligence. And the original idea was to take three generations of women from the family, have us all talk to each other, do oral histories, transcribe that information, feed it into a recursive neural network, or a chat bot system, and allow others to question it so that they get to know us and our values and ideas.”

“I also think that there's a space where we get to interrogate and question the systems and think a little deeper about not only using those systems, but changing them.”

“We need to find ways to make technologies that seem really inaccessible and perhaps not for certain communities feel like they are accessible, and find ways then to use them.”

“I've come to the conclusion that in the short run specifically, the data is going to be the thing that we need to be conscious of.”

“I feel like the story of my family is a very specific one that has some specificities that we would like to share in a certain way, and that I don't want to be lost even to a next generation. And a way to hold onto that is to build it into a system that will be going on and engaging other systems. And so I do this work hoping that will hang around, and hoping that we don't just get overrun by whatever it is makes it most expedient to get to the information or ideas that are out there.”

“We seem to be creating a world through algorithms and artificially intelligent systems that - it's gonna really form and inform the way the world functions going forward.”

“I was talking to this robot and questioning her and we were having conversations, and it became clear to me that some of the things I was looking for were not in her.”

“I happen to think that we're entering a time where artists and everyone else are going to have to be learning all the time.”

Who You'll Hear

Dirk Knemeyer, Social Futurist and Producer of Creative Next (@dknemeyer)

Jonathan Follett, Writer, Electronic Musician, Emerging Tech Researcher and Producer of Creative Next (@jonfollett)

Stephanie Dinkins, Artist & Associate Professor, Stony Brook University (@StephDink)

Join The Conversation

Website & Newsletter: www.creativenext.org

Twitter: @GoCreativeNext

Facebook: /GoCreativeNext

Instagram: @GoCreativeNext

Sponsors

GoInvo, A design practice dedicated to innovation in healthcare whose clients are as varied as AstraZeneca, 3M Health Information Services, and the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. www.goinvo.com

Design Museum Foundation, A new kind of museum, they believe design can change the world. They’re online, nomadic, and focused on making design accessible to everyone. Their mission: bring the transformative pow...

The digital design profession has undergone tumultuous change over the last decades, lessons from which inform the future of AI-driven computational design. Daniel Harvey, Head of Product Design & Brand at The Dots Global, is our guest.

Design has evolved since the rise of the Internet and mobile computing, resulting in unintended negative consequences in our world such as the appropriation of social media technologies by evil actors, and the pernicious influences of bias and other invisible forces. In extreme cases our tools even contribute to the culmination of the most horrific of outcomes, such as the genocide in Rohingya. We explore how these complicated dynamics provide a glimpse into the future of design and technology.

Memorable Quotes

“When we're ripping off the same Silicon Valley apps, or the same sort of business models we end up inheriting, intentionally or not, all their weird, fucked up, white tech world biases too.”

“There is this fantastic service that you can take the content of a job description, put it into that, and it will remove the gender bias from it.”

“As design does evolve, and as tools evolve, and as patterns evolve, I think we could get to a point where design is less about sort of pixel level craft, it's about more higher level value.”

“One of the things that I'm most excited about is the reemergence of niche networks.”

“Facebook was used as a platform to promote hate in Myanmar which led to an unconscionable number of real deaths, a massive refugee crisis.”

“You can have the most diverse and inclusive team in the world, but if you're looking at the same three or four big tech companies as examples to swear by, you're never going to really see the benefits of that diversity.”

“What's still not happening is you don't have one sort of common tool that's pointing to the same common assets and common design libraries or pattern libraries.”

“Because of this proliferation of advertising as the default business model, we're just accustomed to it now, and we're willing to accept it when it does creep back in.”

“When you have voracious growth of a community, of an audience, and then you start to put advertising on top of that, the inevitable metric becomes daily active users. And the inevitable experience of using the product is, we'll cram advertising more and more into every part of the experience.”

“If you start to grow your skill sets in other areas, it's just an extra superpower.”

“There's a real problem with so much sameness in design today.”

“The scale of these platforms is what invariably leads to their potential for damage.”

Who You'll Hear

Dirk Knemeyer, Social Futurist and Producer of Creative Next (@dknemeyer)

Jonathan Follett, Writer, Electronic Musician, Emerging Tech Researcher and Producer of Creative Next (@jonfollett)

Daniel Harvey, Head of Product Design & Brand at The Dots Global (@dancharvey)

Join The Conversation

Website & Newsletter: www.creativenext.org

Twitter: @GoCreativeNext

Facebook: /GoCreativeNext

Instagram: @GoCreativeNext

Sponsors

GoInvo, A design practice dedicated to innovation in healthcare whose clients are as varied as AstraZeneca, 3M Health Information Services, and the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. www.goinvo.com

Design Museum Foundation, A new kind of museum, they believe design can change the world. They’re online, nomadic, and focused on making design accessible to everyone. Their mission: bring the transformative power of design everywhere. You can learn about their exhibitions, events, magazine, and more. www.designmuseumfoundation.org

BIF, As a purpose-driven firm, BIF is committed to bringing design strategy where it is needed most - health care, education, and public service to create value for our most vulnerable populations. www.bif.is

What is the role and future of generative design and machine learning in the field of architecture? Lilli Smith, Senior Product Manager AEC Generative Design at Autodesk, joins us to discuss these emerging technologies.

Architecture, in collaboration with Engineering and Construction, leads to the creation of the millions of buildings around the world. Like many other creative professions, architecture is being transformed by smartware in the form of things like generative design applications and additive fabrication, which is better known as 3d printing. Autodesk’s Lilli Smith brings more than 20 years of personal history and insight to our conversation on these topics.

Memorable Quotes

“By the year, 2050 there are going to be 10 billion people on earth and if you do the math, we're going to need to build about 13,000 buildings a day to accommodate all those people.”

“Humans are still going to be critical in these design efforts because they're gonna be setting up the problems, deciding what kinds of problems to solve using machines to help them to do a better job.”

“Machine learning algorithms lessen the number of design options that the designer has to sort through.”

“The computer can actually surprise you with combinations of different inputs that you might not have thought about before.”

“Computer literacy and coding literacy are really seen now as core competencies for architects and engineers in school.”

“When there are several inputs to the design, it becomes really hard for the human mind to keep track of all the combinations of those inputs.”

“We have tools that can actually predict the next node that you should place in a design sequence and give you ideas about what can come next.”

“Technologies like machine learning can help people to code better and they'll be able describe their design ideas better for other kinds of automation.”

“What people say they do and what they actually do is usually different.”

“My 10-year-old has been coding in Scratch since before she could read. It’s really exciting to think about what her generation, the creative things that they're going to be able to come up with to deal with these technologies.”

“Generative design is really not new. There's a long history of generative art.”

Who You'll Hear

Dirk Knemeyer, Social Futurist and Producer of Creative Next (@dknemeyer)

Jonathan Follett, Writer, Electronic Musician, Emerging Tech Researcher and Producer of Creative Next (@jonfollett)

Lilli Smith, Senior Product Manager AEC Generative Design, Autodesk (@LilliMSmith)

Join The Conversation

Website & Newsletter: www.creativenext.org

Twitter: @GoCreativeNext

Facebook: /GoCreativeNext

Instagram: @GoCreativeNext

Sponsors

GoInvo, A design practice dedicated to innovation in healthcare whose clients are as varied as AstraZeneca, 3M Health Information Services, and the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. www.goinvo.com

Design Museum Foundation, A new kind of museum, they believe design can change the world. They’re online, nomadic, and focused on making design accessible to everyone. Their mission: bring the transformative power of design everywhere. You can learn about their exhibitions, events, magazine, and more. www.designmuseumfoundation.org

BIF, As a purpose-driven firm, BIF is committed to bringing design strategy where it is needed most - health care, education, and public service to create value for our most vulnerable populations. www.bif.is