DMA Event - The Machine Age: How to use AI right here, right now

Leena and Paul, our Client Relationship Managers, recently attended the DMA's event "The machine age: How to use AI right here, right now" in London. We caught up with them to find out about the event and how it went. 

Tell us a bit about the event?

Paul: The presentations took place in the DMA offices in central London on Wednesday 28th June. People started arriving from 8.30am and the event finished at midday. After the coffee and pastries, the presentations began and then to finish off there was a panel discussion with all of the presenters. 

What were the stand out presentations for you?

Leena: The last presentation by Jeremy Waite from IBM, for me, was very powerful. He was speaking about AI in marketing and in particular, IBM Watson (a similar technology to Siri or Alexa). IBM Watson is a campaign management tool that can analyse and evaluate campaigns in seconds, enabling you to make decisions and execute optimised campaigns in minutes. The tool seems very accessible, giving users a dashboard to interrogate the data and findings. It was only the 3^rd time it had been demo’d in Europe so quite exciting to see.

For me it was most powerful because Jeremy started the presentation speaking about his inspiration for working on the project. This was the birth of his premature twins, when one was given 0% chance of survival and the other 40%. They were monitored by AI machines which were constantly learning from the scenarios and events that the twins were experiencing. Fortunately his twins survived and the AI machine can now help other families in a similar situation have a more positive and informed experience.  

Paul: Katie Ayaz from RBS also gave an interesting presentation about their implementation of "ChatBot". The tool has been introduced in RBS’s 3 brands for customer service queries, allowing a different customer contact methodology. ChatBot will learn frequent answers to people’s questions and eventually people’s questions will be able to be answered much more quickly - only when it’s complex will the question be answered by a human. ChatBot is currently only rolled out to small percentage of the population whilst they're still in the early stages.

What was your key takeaway from the event? 

Paul: AI and machine learning is a way of analysing and refining things more quickly, taking out poor or emotive human decisions and making things smoother for the future. However, AI will never take the place completely of a human – it's purely a support mechanism for humans. AI can crunch numbers in volumes we could never comprehend – and can do it in seconds. The next step for the bot in the industry is voice assistance.

Leena: I came away with a much better understanding of what AI and machine learning actually is, and how the different industries are using it. It also helped me understand further how this can be applied to our own firm and industry, and the work TwentyCi are doing with Machine Learning. 

Anything else you’d like to share?

Paul: I thought it was really interesting the fact that this technology has been around for a long time - 10+ years - and it shouldn't be scary. 

Leena: The interpretation of AI in the media and the negative portrayal of it in films and TV (e.g. terminator, AI etc) means that the people building this technology will possibly have to start using different terminology for it, like “predictive intelligence”. The benefits are clearly demonstrated, however the perception is key for it to be accepted.

To download and read the full slides, click here. For more information about this event and other upcoming DMA events, visit their website.