You’re in marketing for one reason: Grow. Grow your company, reputation, customers, impact, profits. Grow yourself. This is a community that will help. It will stretch your mind, connect you to fascinating people, and provide some fun along the way. I am so glad you’re here. -Mark Schaefer
I attended MAICON, an AI conference focused on the marketing profession. This was a worthwhile and well-run event with about 2,000 attendees.
I tend to focus on higher-level issues rather than tips and tricks, and I collected a few quotes for you about the future of AI and marketing.
Ideas from several notable speakers:
Paul Roetzer, founder of SmarterX, the host of the conference
In 12 months, AI will be able to perform any cognitive task a marketing executive does today at an A-level performance. Some work (maybe the majority) will be automated by agents.
Work will compress. One person could do the work of an entire go-to-market team in a matter of hours.
The roadblock to productivity will be management’s capacity to review and approve AI-generated work. This suggests new roles will be needed. But will those roles also eventually be automated?
Because of the tsunami of AI output, “human in the lead” versus “human in the loop” will be a friction point for organizations that want to move fast and disrupt.
The idea of an “orchestrator” of AI activity was pervasive at the event, especially with the added productivity of agents.
The risk is not that AI does the work. The risk is that AI does the work and we never learn from it. If every interaction with an agent happens on a private screen, the only person who learns anything is the person at the keyboard. Everyone else is locked out of the apprenticeship afforded by AI.
Craig Karmazin, Founder of Good Karma Sports
I had scheduled an entire day to work on a project. I got into AI and had the project completed in 15 minutes. That’s when I realized that AI can do my job better than me.
We saw an explosive output of productivity from employees using AI. We estimated they were using it 20% of the time. How much more could we grow if they were using it 100% of the time?
When I interview a new employee, I ask them about their fear of AI. I have fear, too. But I’m not willing to jeopardize the company’s future by not embracing it.
Kevin Roose, author, tech columnist, podcaster
“Feel the AGI” means internalizing the implications of AI progress and arranging one’s life and career accordingly.
This is how Silicon Valley works. They can’t think of anything else. Most normal people can’t fathom what is really happening with AI. You feel vertigo from the pace of change.
You can’t feel the AGI with a free Copilot license.
Anthropic reported that 26% of its research projects are led by an AI agent, not a human. This will certainly increase rapidly.
How to embrace AI:
- Pay for a good model. Experience the frontier.
- Give it a hard task. Be ambitious.
- Don’t run old tapes. Re-run your 2023 prompts. You may be surprised at the improvement.
- Vibecode a personal website.
- Pay attention to straight lines on graphs. When you see a line going up and up, imagine what it means for the future, what it means for you.
The people who serve food at the OpenAI cafeteria adhere to more regulations than the people upstairs creating life-changing AI platforms.
The world is being re-created by 50 people in San Francisco. We need more oversight and accountability for these people. We should not be passive recipients of change. He called for an end to AI fatalism.
Brian Piper, founder of AIrFlow Consulting
Brian gave a comprehensive view of using AI skills to help with every step of the content creation process.
My big takeaway was that I already use my own prompts to help with content, but I often re-create the skill every time I need it. I should save this as a set of reusable skills.
Brian’s workflow chart was gigantic, but his point was, you’re already doing this work. Just let AI help you automate the process as a reusable skill.
Mitch Joel, Founder of Next Era Institute
Disruption is the operating system.
Disruption is now “speed at all costs.” Just accept it. Stop using speed as an excuse.
Direction + momentum > speed.
AI is not replacing us. It is exposing us. And not necessarily in a bad way. It’s pointing out the opportunities. Let AI handle the friction. We create the meaning.
AI is not going to kill marketing; it’s killing our excuses.
We are shifting from the attention economy to the intimacy economy — the 1 to X moment. One idea, one campaign, many expressions, infinite context. You are in the business of intimacy and memory.
Don’t lo(bot)omize marketing. Bot-on-bot action is not hot. That is not the work we were meant to do. The future of marketing is still trust.
When everyone has the same machine, trust moves upstream to humans.
He emphasized the importance of community. AI can generate. AI can optimize. AI can’t stand in a room and care.
Andrew Yang, entrepreneur and political commentator
I ran for president in 2020 to be the Paul Revere of AI. AI is coming, AI is coming. I experienced the nature of U.S. politics, which is like a room of funhouse mirrors. I felt despondent from the experience. I started the Forward Party. The Backward Party was already taken.
We have Stone Age brains, Medieval institutions, and Space Age technology.
There will be a very rough patch going forward. If you spend $3 trillion on thinking machines, you are going to have to eliminate jobs to find the ROI.
The value of a college education will shrink. This will have disastrous social effects. 25% of colleges will close in the next 10 years. AI is a neutron bomb for education.
My kid wants to have an AI girlfriend. It’s frictionless. Even a great relationship has friction. It’s compromise and work. AI makes being a human harder. The danger is that young people are outsourcing their hopes, dreams, and humanity to AI.
The average person won’t be able to compete with AI. The data server is the new worker. That’s where the economy is heading. We need a universal basic income and to create an economy and society based on what we enjoy: arts and creativity, health and wellness, caring and nurturing.
Karen Hao, author of “The Empire of AI”
AI is the new empire, defined by:
- Seizing land and resources
- Exploiting labor
- Monopolizing the money going to scientific research
- Justifying actions with moral and existential imperatives
Karen presented a rather detailed and apocalyptic view of the AI industry, noting its dramatically negative impact on the environment, worker exploitation, energy consumption, water use, and monopolization of research investment funds. She concluded that weaponization and rapid AI scaling threaten democracy.
Overheard from an attendee at the end of the event
“I just asked my husband if it’s too late to buy a farm.”
Need a keynote speaker? Mark Schaefer is the most trusted voice in marketing. Your conference guests will buzz about his insights long after your event! Mark is the author of some of the world’s bestselling marketing books, a college educator, and an advisor to many of the world’s largest brands. Contact Mark to have him bring a fun, meaningful, and memorable presentation to your company event or conference.
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Illustration courtesy of MidJourney
