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jcmarchi · 1 year ago

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Quantum Photonics For The Masses - Technology Org

New Post has been published on https://thedigitalinsider.com/quantum-photonics-for-the-masses-technology-org/

Quantum Photonics For The Masses - Technology Org

As director of the Courtois Institute and new recipient of a Canada Excellence Research Chair at UdeM, physicist Carlos Silva strives to shed much-needed light on his obscure domain of quantum photonics.

Carlos Silva studies the domain of quantum photonics. Image credit: Amélie Philibert, Université de Montréal

Carlos Silva often has to explain what he does.

He’s a physicist who specializes in materials used in quantum photonics. What are those? Silva has to back up a bit and define simple photonics: light that’s used for a particular function, such as lasers in printers or solar cells in garden lights. Clear enough?

Well, quantum photonics are on a whole other level. You have to know a little bit about quantum mechanics to understand them, and frankly, anything quantum is a little beyond the ken of the general public.

Silva hopes to change that, by letting people know about the fundamental quantum photonics research he does at Université de Montréal. He’s just been named a Canada Excellence Research Chair (CERC) in quantum photonics, a position that provides him with an annual $1 million in federal grants annually over eight years and gives Silva a public platform to show how important it is for society to have scientists like him produce new knowledge.

“It is a challenge in my profession – meaningful communication to the broader public is always a challenge,” admits Silva, who in July took over as director of UdeM’s Institut Courtois, which was created in 2021 to conduct basic research “at the intersection of new materials, quantum physics and artificial intelligence” and which features star researchers in quantum photonics such as Yoshua Bengio and Gilles Brassard and now Silva himself.

“Part of the issue is trying to explain how university research gets funded, and the other is to show how valid and valuable a deliverable like ours is,” Silva says.

“My mission is not to produce a particular application or device, something that the greater public is going to go out and buy in seven years and use in their daily life. It is simply to produce new knowledge that will advance science and hopefully lead to conceptual revolutions that may ultimately produce new technologies.”

‘Revolutions are more profitable’

After all, as Silva points out, in science, “revolutions are more profitable than simple incremental improvements.” Take the birth of quantum mechanics and general relativity a century ago.

“Nobody at the time was thinking of computers and telecommunications and GPS navigation,” Silva says, “but these all came out of physics at a fundamental level. And so it’s true: new knowledge can be transformative and of great benefit to everyone. It’s what a creative society does.”

In his dual role as a CERC recipient and head of the Institut Courtois, Silva plans to engage in quantum photonics research that is in the public interest and also to develop his research organization into a world-class magnet for future talent.

“My research chair is funded by the Canadian government and that’s funded by the taxpayers and I have to produce something that benefits Canada,” Silva says.

“The Institute, on the other hand, is funded by a large private donation [$159 million from the Fondation Courtois, chaired by Quebec businessman Jacques Courtois] with the very specific objective of trying to promote here in Montreal a culture of creativity of the kind you find in hotspots of new technology like Silicon Valley and the Boston area.”

The mission of the Institute, he adds “is not to produce incubators for 10 new start-up companies. Rather, the goal is to develop world-class activities in fundamental science that lead to creativity and that will eventually bring a Nobel Prize here. It’s like what Bell Labs created in the 1960s and ’70s: developing fundamental science that leads to big breakthroughs.”

Materials ‘made by humans’

With research to be carried out at the Institut Courtois’s labs at UdeM’s new Sciences Complex on the MIL Campus, Silva’s CERC is in “light-matter interactions in photonic materials,” which he explains “are made by humans: synthetic materials ranging from organic to hybrid organic-inorganic to inorganic, produced by chemists and engineers.”

Born and raised in Mexico City and Venezuela, Silva comes by his interest in science naturally, stoked from a young age first by his family, then by teachers and by mentors. In the 1990s Silva moved to the United States on a scholarship from the Institute of International Education, obtaining a bachelor’s degree, double-majoring in chemistry and physics, from Luther College in Iowa and then a Ph.D in chemical physics from the University of Minnesota.

In 2001 he moved to England as a postdoctoral fellow at the University of Cambridge’s famous Cavendish Laboratory under Professor Sir Richard Friend, and became an advanced research fellow of the the U.K.’s Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council in 2001.

In 2005, Canada beckoned: Silva took up a post at UdeM as a Canada research chair and assistant professor of physics. Over the next decade, “I rose up the ranks,” he recalls, becoming a full professor in 2015. But once again, the U.S. called, “and I left in 2017 for Georgia Tech,” the Georgia Institute of Technology.

Now he’s back at UdeM, thanks to the double opportunity his CERC and the Institut Courtois appointment provides him “to grow in a way that is unprecedented,” both professionally and personally. “Montreal is actually where I have lived continuously for the longest,” says Silva, a dual Mexican-Canadian citizen.

Recruiting for six chairs

At the Institut Courtois, he intends now to “go out and recruit people who are going to be game-changing for us,” young scientists who are already prominent in their fields. “We have the ability to recruit people of very high caliber and try to establish a research environment that will be a platform for expanded creativity, expanded excellence and so on.”

The Institute will be awarding six chairs; he occupies one, as director; two were announced in late September (William Witczak-Krempa in physics, Michael Dollé in chemistry); and three will come “over the next few years.”

In his spare time, Silva travels back and forth to Mexico, rides horses (growing up, he competed nationally in equestrian sports), nurtures his son’s obsession with lasers and his daughter’s with literature and drama, tinkers around the house (“I’m manual, very much an experimentalist”), and indulges his biggest hobby, cooking, especially Chinese and Mexican.

“Sometimes it’s good to just disconnect from your work – from lasers, from personnel issues at the Institute, from grant proposals – and apply your mind to everyday things, and cooking is a good way to do that,” he explains.

“With enough practice, one can be good and creative. It’s always about this: how can I turn what I’m doing into something new?”

Source: University of Montreal

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whump-a-la-mode · 4 years ago

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Villian-Sicle | Part 5

I feel like now would be a pertinent time to mention that this is my first attempt at writing a sort of drabble series. The majority of my work is 50k-100k word nerd ass novels, and I think that this part will make that unfortunately abundantly apparent. I’m sorry for just how long it is, but I’ve absolutely loved writing these characters, and I got a little bit carried away with fleshing out the world a bit more ^^

Also, I feel I should probably mention that, though characters in this story speak Latin, I do not know any Latin. I wrote this using dictionaries and very basic grammar guides, and I sincerely hope I did not mess up too bad.

Thank you for reading! It’s a long one, but I hope you’ll enjoy.

CW//Superhero whump, villain whumpee, hypothermia, military setting (kinda), pet whump, dehumanization, past trauma, muzzles, restraints, conditioned whumpee, depiction of an implied panic attack, denial of water

Taglist:

@whatwhumpcomments

@sola-whumping

@professional-idiocy

Villain couldn’t help but shake and buck their head as a corrugation of metal and leather was slipped over their face, securing their jaw in its current position and forcing them to bite down against the pressure. It had been fitted since last time, they noted rather hollowly-- with a piece of padding now standing between the bridge of their noise and the harsh metal wires. Regardless of how many adjustments were made to the piece, however, making it comfortable seemed beyond their ability.

They, in this specific circumstance, referred mainly to the two soldiers before Villain. Trainer was the only one of the two that they knew the name of-- though they were nearly unrecognizable beneath the layers of gear shrouding their appearance.

The helmet they wore resembled more so that of a motorcyclist rather than that of an armed combatant, but the rest of their kit was far more military. Beneath their uniform bulged the clear outlines of a tac-vest, with their hands shielded by Kevlar gloves, constructed of an intricate mesh of triangular pieces, in a similar manner to chain-mail.

The other soldier was dressed in nearly identical kit, just without the gloves-- those were for handlers, which this other soldier must’ve surely not been. They turned to Trainer, noises in an odd language curling off their tongue. Trainer replied with a laugh.

With practiced hands, Trainer took the muzzle’s straps and secured them behind Villain’s head, tightening the metal until it dug into their skin, tearing at old sores created by the same device. Their leash was quickly hooked to a ring protruding from the muzzle’s wires.

“Manibus.” Trainer’s voice spoke. They nearly flinched at the sheer speed at which Villain offered their hands. Momentarily, Trainer ghosted their fingers over the leather mitten restraints that kept Villain’s fine motor abilities under control. They checked the wrist straps, ensuring their tautness, nodding their approval.

“Abeamus?” The other soldier suggested, to which Trainer gave another nod. They wrapped Villain’s leash around their wrist, halving its length, until there was negligible slack in the line.

Another group of soldiers, all dressed in military-style garments of their own, loitered together by the door to the staging room. They looked to Trainer, marginally straightening their postures, and, presumably, minimizing the amount of swearing in their speech.

With a few words and a flick of the wrist, the squadron was off.

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Leader couldn’t stop looking at Villain’s eyes.

They weren’t quite certain what had pulled them into such an odd trance. It was nothing about color, certainly, nor anything else physical or inherent-- they were unremarkable, in such respects. No, it was certainly something about the expression they portrayed.

A moment ago, they’d seen shattering fear turn to fury in these eyes. Now, they seemed blank, as though constructed of glass and merely painted upon. There was no expression beyond them, no recognition, no indication that Villain’s mind was occupied by anything at all. Their gaze stared straight through Leader, through the ceiling above as well.

Leader was torn from their daze by a commotion from behind them as the door was thrown open. Medic was nearly knocked over as Hero burst in, followed more ploddingly by Counselor.

“Be careful.” Leader warned, looking up and turning to the group. “There’s broken shit everywhere.”

Hero’s eyes darted around the room, seemingly taking in the mess. Broken glass coated the tile floor in a thin dusting of shards, while various mechanical parts still smoked in whatever place they had happened to end up. The lights had been blown out completely, leaving the lighting in the room to be provided by a flashlight laid on a countertop, as well as, now, the light soaking in from the hallway.

After their panicked scan, Hero settled their gaze on Villain.

“Are they...”

“They’re fine.” Medic interrupted.

“They’re not moving.”

“Well... I’m going to hazard to say that that’s a good thing. If I had to guess, it seems like a shock response. It’s not exactly my biggest concern, right about now.”

“What about the, uh, bleeding hole in their chest?”

“That would be my biggest concern.”

Medic grabbed a variety of, miraculously undamaged, medical supplies from a cupboard, setting to work at Villain’s wound. It was small, deliberate, having been incised to be used as an access point for the dialysis machine, but Leader had a feeling that even minor blood loss could be a death sentence, at this point.

Hero and Counselor hovered, for a moment, at Villain’s bedside, while Medic did their work. Leader stood back, nearly having to forcibly tear their gaze from that of Villain.

That odd sort of silence remained for several moments, if not minutes, as Medic’s deft hands worked to close the wound. It was only when the last suture was tied that Counselor spoke up-- one of the only times they had done so for the whole mission.

“Leader?”

“Hm?”

“What’s our plan, exactly? What are our orders?”

They raised a brow. Counselor was never that direct-- nor that military.

“Um...” It felt quite stupid, being caught unprepared like this, but in their defense, they had nearly just been killed by an exploding air conditioner. “I... I don’t want to hazard doing anything until Villain is stable.”

“That was your plan before.” Medic muttered as they pried latex gloves from their hands. “It almost got us killed.”

“Right. Yeah, um, are they stable enough? For transport?”

“They’re not going to bleed out, if that’s your concern. Physically, I’d say they’re stable. Mentally? I think we need to get them to a secure location before they snap out of this fugue state.”

“Alright.” Leader chewed their tongue. “Let’s get the van ready, then.”

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The ship’s deck was notably busy, despite the fact that it was relatively late at night. The vessel’s skeleton crew hurried about, keeping it afloat and on track, while outdated Humvees drove in chaotic paths. What the commotion was about was beyond Villain’s knowledge, or their capacity to care. All that mattered was fighting their instinct to cover their ears, and ensuring that they were keeping up with Trainer.

They could feel it-- the boat-- beneath them. The millions of systems and circuits and electrons, thrumming and being jolted about by a swaying sea.

The small company that Trainer had gathered made their way to the far end of the deck, where a VTOL plane was already humming, waiting for its crew to board. They did so, clustering themselves into the compact cabin. There was, notably, no room the vessel for a pilot-- all steering operations would be handled by an artificial intelligence of sorts. Villain greeted the computer program, but it did not respond.

Trainer settled themself into a middle seat at the front of the cabin. Villain sat obediently at their side, at which point their leash was secured to a handrail sticking out of the wall. They rested their head against the window. Though the cabin was crowded, at the very least, Villain was no longer forced to make the trip in the K9 compartment.

Once every member of the company was settled and seated, the VTOL’s doors slid shut, and the engine thwapp-thwapp-thwapped until the aircraft was off the ground. It shot upwards for a second, traveling several hundred feet in the time, before entering a linear dive and settling for a position around fifty feet above the choppy waters.

Villain closed their eyes, allowing their mind to wander to the creature around them. The VTOL contained what was likely the most complex computer program that the Organization had. Despite all its bells and whistles, however, it paid no mind to Villain’s prodding and wandering.

The plane’s route was not awfully complex. The vehicle was designed, surtout, for water-based travel. Though it could move over land, it struggled to rise above three hundred or so feet, making it useless for far-inland routes. Wherever it was going today was, luckily, on the coast-- somewhere in the forests of Washington state.

If they so wished, Villain could alter the route in any way they so pleased. They could send the aircraft into the ocean below, or back into the ship, or into the first land they saw. It would be simple-- all their problems gone in a moment.

Once the plane’s angle had leveled out, Trainer stood, moving to the front of the plane. Villain gnashed their teeth, attempting to rise from their seat, but finding themself limited by the taut leather line on their muzzle. They were too far, they were on mission, they shouldn’t have been so far, come on, come on. The leash refused to give way, however, leaving them firmly affixed in position.

Trainer cleared their throat, drawing the attention of the gathered company. They began to speak, words taking on quite a commanding air, though Villain only understand a few choice phrases.

“Incursus” was the one that made them prick their ears. They had heard it only a few times before. In conversation, once or twice, but more notably during mission briefings. The last time they had heard it... several missions ago, before they had been briefly confined to the medical wing.

The word itself was meaningless-- its implications less so.

Villain gulped, their jaw straining against the wires of their muzzle.

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Leader walked at the side of the gurney, ghosting a hand over one of the siderails all the while. A pair of doctors pushed the gurney itself, with Medic trailing close behind, and Hero and Counselor at their sides.

In contrast with the upper floors, the hospital’s lobby floor was brightly lit, almost overwhelmingly so, with expanses of floor-to-ceiling windows. The beige carpeting was bathed with the last remnants of sunrise orange-- it had been a long night.

The few patients in the hospital at such as hour were hurried out of the way as the gurney moved through. A scattering of nurses and varied hospital personnel were littered about, watching the Heroes’ procession, but staying several yards away, unwilling to even be in Villain’s vicinity.

Leader looked down at the gurney. A blanket had been draped over Villain, working to keep them at a stable temperature. Their fabric and webbing restraints had been replaced by those made of metal.

Their eyes were open. They had been the whole time. Despite, they had yet to struggle in any form.

The automatic doors at the front of the lobby rumbled open, allowing the gurney to be pushed through. A team of doctors and Leader’s own personnel stood outside, gathered around an ambulance with its back doors hanging open. The doctors pushing the gurney passed it off to some of the stronger personnel, who lifted the contraption into the vehicle’s back, securing it.

Leader nodded their thanks, and moved to get behind the vehicle’s wheel.

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The ship hadn’t been too far off of the East coast to begin with, making the trip to Washington a relatively short one. It took one hour, thirty-six minutes, and eighty-two seconds, to be exact-- far more amicable than the 16-hour trips they had endured in the past.

The VTOL had made a measured descent into a forest clearing, shredding the grass below with its landing gear. With the doors open, the company had scrambled out; Trainer taking Villain’s leash in hand once more.

In the clearing, there had been no sign of life besides a scurrying songbird or two. Villain had only then realized a far more unpleasant aspect of the mission.

They were going to be marching.

Not marching, exactly, they supposed. There was no regimented order to it, it was more like hiking. Just... hiking for hours. The VTOL couldn’t go too far inland, and landing it close to a target was often impossible.

So, they marched.

Sometimes, heaven would be merciful, and the trek would be short, of only a mile or so. On crueler days, though, they would move for hours-- breaking only for water, which Villain would watch the soldiers drink with a parched throat.

Even just from the look of the clearing, and its location, however, Villain had been able to tell that today was not one of those more merciful occasions.

When the plane had landed, the moon at been at its highest point--signifying that midnight had struck. For the first few hours, they walked in darkness, until dawn slowly began to creep up.

All in all, the trek had taken four hours, most of which were spent walking. By the time the group stopped and crouched down, Villain felt their legs were about to snap. It had been far too many hours and far too many miles since they had cared to look at their surroundings. All that mattered was Trainer, and staying awake.

The company made themselves small among an area of heavy undergrowth. Trainer let Villain’s leash loosely hang around their wrist. Even if the technopath had any desire to flee, they doubted they could even get their legs back under them.

One of the soldiers spoke up, somehow sounding hardly winded. Though most of their words served as nonsense to Villain’s ears, one did stick out: Scopum. It was one of the words Trainer had used, back when they were teaching Villain how to search and retrieve objects.

Trainer nodded, took a drink of water from a canteen, and got to their knees. They pointed to something behind the bushes-- Villain got on their knees to look at well.

Over the wall of undergrowth, a building could be seen. It wasn’t particularly notable-- it would be best described as a cabin, with rustic architecture and an array of out-of-season Christmas lights. It seemed to be a vacation home of sorts; large enough to fit a family, certainly, but not a place anyone would live permanently.

Was this their Scopum? Their goal?

Trainer took hold again of Villain’s leash and stood. The real mission was just about to begin, and Villain could hardly stand.

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The drive from the hospital to their base was longer than Leader would have preferred, enough to make them nervously request updates every few minutes, much to Medic’s distaste.

The base stood at the edge of one of Washington’s denser forests, about half an hour out from the city proper. The location provided security, and in their group’s early days, secrecy, but it made transport difficult.

“Hey, Medic?” Leader started.

“Villain is fine. They’re still out of it. Cabin temperature is staying steady at 70, their body temperature is just about where it should be. Keep your damn eyes on the road.”

Leader nodded, biting the inside of their cheek. City traffic had been left behind a few miles ago, leaving only empty back roads. Seven minutes to go, the GPS diligently reported.

“We’re close now, then.” Medic spoke, starting the conversation for once. They weren’t usually the one to do such a thing, but Hero and Counselor were in the ambulance’s back. “What are you thinking?”

“Thinking?”

“Your plans. Please don’t forget that you’re the leader around here, you give the orders. What do we do, when we get back to base?”

Leader bit their tongue to prevent themself from snapping at that passive insult. They were glad for the change in topic, at least.

“Our first priority is keeping ourselves safe. Villain’s safety is second priority-- I’m not sacrificing anything to keep their wellbeing. But I wouldn’t consider them a threat, right now. I assume you would like to keep them in the med bay?”

“For now, at least. They’re stable, but the fact that they’re still breathing is a miracle. I want to have my equipment nearby if they crash.”

“As long as it’s safe, then.”

“And then what?”

“Then... they’re still a prisoner, injured or not. Then we put them in the cells.”

“We don’t have any cells?”

“We’ll cross that bridge when we come to it.”

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The company moved swiftly, forcing Villain’s legs to wake up to the horrible feeling of pins and needles. Trainer remained at the group’s head, leading them forth to the cabin.

It must have looked quite ridiculous, to an outsider. Villain would have laughed if they were able.

The group stopped before the quaint structure.

“Aperire.” Trainer ordered. Villain gnashed their teeth.

The command was a simple one, generally. It meant that they were to open something-- usually a door, or a box, or an encrypted device. The wooden door before them, however, had no electric component; it didn’t even seem to have a lock at all.

Still, they dove into the few electronics that the building did host. The Christmas lights seemed to be meaningless noise-- they tore through those, searching instead through the inner electronics. They were uncomplicated, so much so that their purpose couldn’t be so much as guessed.

Villain panicked, gnashing their teeth, shaking their head against the muzzle. They didn’t know what to do. They could feel their heartbeat, pounding in their head, throbbing.

“Aperire.” Trainer repeated. It only increased Villain’s heartrate-- what were hey doing wrong? Please, what were they doing wrong? They dove back into the systems. There was no door to be seen, just the lights, just some random system. They decided on the latter, tripping the system, just as they drew blood from biting down on their own tongue.

The house rumbled.

Instead of opening as a door should, the rustic home’s door slid into the wall, revealing a brightly-lit interior-- devoid of both furniture and interest.

The only point of interest was at the very center of the floor: A ramp, leading downwards.

Villain gulped. With rougher hands than before, Trainer yanked at their leash, forcing them forth. Together, the two descended, the company right on their heels.

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The base-- it had no real name, it was simply “the base”-- was an uncomplicated corrugation of concrete walls and sparse entranceways. It had been constructed as the shell of a factory, years ago, a factory which eventually fell through. Since then, Leader had organized quite a renovation of the property.

They drove the ambulance to the base’s parking lot, backing up to the curb as near to the entrance as they could.

“You worried?” Medic asked.

“Mhm.” Leader nodded, hopping out of the cockpit and to the asphalt below. The ambulance’s rear doors had already been swung open, with Hero and Counselor working to guide the gurney from it.

Villain still laid on the bed, shrouded with blankets, nearly comatose.

Their eyes moved.

Leader did a double-take, looking back to the figure on the gurney. Villain’s gaze had moved, now directing itself straight at Leader. Whatever expression they were portraying... it looked like fear.

Leader frowned. They moved to the transport bed’s side, placing their hands on the rails.

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The ramp descended at least a story into the earth.

With every step they took, Villain could feel their mind become more and more cluttered. At first, they could only hear the simple lighting and ventilation systems, but as they grew deeper, more noises joined the cacophony. Computers and servers, medical equipment and weaponry, it all blended together, all humming, all whirring, all chanting until it made Villain’s head hurt.

At the base of the ramp, which they only reached after what felt like an eternity, stood a simple door. Nothing more than a steel barrier.

“Perdere.”

That command was about as simple as they came. Within a split second, the door, and half of the wall, before Villain had been decimated to rubble.

On the other side of the newly-torn door, a figure moved. Villain flinched, gnawing again on their bloodied tongue. Trainer forced them forward.

The room was empty, devoid, as the past one had been. There was no furniture, no weaponry, no defense. Only a person, standing squarely before the door at the far end.

Their wings brushed the room’s walls.

Leader glared.

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As they leaned over Villain’s bedside, Leader smiled-- an expression as gentle as they could make it. They weren’t sure what had suddenly turned them so soft. Pity, maybe? Somehow, though, it tugged at them in the same way as nostalgia.

They brushed a hand over Villain’s shoulder.

“Hey. You’re gonna be okay.”

The next part was the stupid one. The soft one, the one that would have made anyone in any faction laugh. One that, if anyone had heard it, Leader surely never would have lived down. Even they were not sure why they spoke it.

Five simple words. Five words without meaning.

“Welcome to your new home.”

#whump #villain whumpee #whump community #whumpblr #whumpee #conditioned whumpee #whump trope #whump prompt #hero villain whump

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theliberaltony · 6 years ago

Link

via Politics – FiveThirtyEight

Presidential hopeful Andrew Yang is famous for his plan to implement a universal basic income to help Americans who lose their jobs to robots. And that isn’t the only place tech innovation takes center stage in his platform. He also advocates that your online data be treated as personal property that you can choose (or not) to sell to companies like Facebook. In a Yang presidency, election results would be verified through blockchain (an encryption system best known for shoring up cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin), quantum computing research would be better funded, and a Legion of Builders and Destroyers would have the power to overrule local zoning and land-use decisions for the greater infrastructure good. He is definitely the only presidential candidate talking seriously about fighting climate change with giant space mirrors.

But while the Yang platform can occasionally appear to drift toward a bid for a Hugo Award, experts who study the history and sociology of tech say his enthusiasm for and belief in the promise of technology is actually in step with the way most Americans (and the Democratic party, in particular) approach innovation. To the extent that Yang, a political novice whose credentials are largely built on his history as a successful tech entrepreneur, is polling above people like Kirsten Gillibrand and Bill de Blasio, it could be because he’s done such a good job of speaking to a defining aspect of the American psyche: one that both loves and fears tech. If anything, despite the sci-fi trappings of his policies, some experts said Yang might be a little behind the curve — playing to a vision of the future already looks a little retro in its belief that Silicon Valley hype will match reality.

The American relationship with technology is a complicated one. Research suggests that a majority of Americans — 59 percent in a 2014 Pew Research Center poll — have faith that technological advancements will make our lives better in the future. In 2016, the same organization found that 52 percent of us think technology has already had a largely positive effect on society. Those beliefs have long-standing precedent, said Lee Vinsel, a professor of science, technology and society at Virginia Tech, stretching back to the cults of personality built up around 19th century inventors like Thomas Edison and Alexander Graham Bell. “There’s an emphasis on technology and how it grows the economy as an unvarnished good,” Vinsel said.

But those top-line numbers can mask some underlying discomfort with the technological tools we allow into our lives. The same polls that show a majority of Americans looking forward to a tech-enabled future also show a distinct lack of enthusiasm for technologies closer to our fingertips. We may expect unspecified “technology” to make our lives better down the road, but 63 percent of us think opening U.S. airspace to drones will make life worse; 65 percent of us don’t like the idea of robots caring for the sick and elderly; and 78 percent of us would not eat meat grown in a lab if someone set it on our plates.

That’s because cycles of techno-hype and disillusionment are a major part of American culture and public policy, said Taylor Dotson, a professor of social sciences at the New Mexico Institute of Mining and Technology. Usually, politicians and the public see a social problem and decide technology will solve it; then, they discover that the solution comes with a whole new set of issues — which they often expect future technology to solve. It’s like the old Simpsons joke describing alcohol as the cause of and solution to all of life’s problems. “Oh, yeah. We see technology in a similar way to that,” Dotson said.

And experts said Yang’s platform taps right into the current American zeitgeist — for example, in the way he is simultaneously grappling with the risks artificial intelligence poses to some job markets, while proposing it as a replacement for other human jobs in other areas. But they also said he’s hardly the first political candidate to look to technology for the answers to societal ills. In fact, the Democratic Party has long considered itself the standard-bearer of scientific expertise, adopting an almost utopian vision of technological innovation since at least the Kennedy years, Vinsel said.

Practically, this means that Democrats have made technology a bigger part of their image over the years. In the 1980s, for instance, “Atari Democrats” wore fancy watches and promoted Silicon Valley boosterism as an alternative to courting labor unions, said Marc Aidinoff, a history doctoral candidate at MIT who has also worked as a junior policy advisor to Joe Biden. That trend continued under Barack Obama, said Mary Ebeling, a professor of sociology at Drexel University. Obama’s technology advisors were heavily recruited from Silicon Valley and many returned there after serving in his administration. And now, it’s not just the Democratic Party pushing tech-based solutions, Vinsel said. At this point, the ideas of technological innovation and economic growth are so linked in the American mind that neither party can step away from tech as a common good without seeming like they are anti-growth.

But Democrats’ tendency to seek solutions in technology for social problems has not always served them well. Ebeling is currently working on a project that explores how adopting electronic health records as part of the Affordable Care Act affected both patients and workers in the medical industry. The electronic records were pushed as a solution to deep-seated problems that weren’t really about technology — boosters promised they’d make healthcare cheaper and solve problems with patient access to consistent medical care. Instead, Ebeling is finding that we spent billions effectively favoring an industry that could never produce the returns it promised. “And lo and behold, by 2019, you have Kaiser Health News reporting on how much harm electronic health records have caused. Literally the death of patients because of medical errors,” she said.

When our faith and enthusiasm in the power of technology hits a wall, the collision happens with all the force of a coyote riding a jetpack. Aidinoff, the former political consultant, thinks we’re in a cultural moment when our belief in the promises of technology are meeting a crushing reality. Since the Cold War, Americans have been assured that the internet and communication networks would serve as liberalizing forces, or as tools to draw repressed countries toward democracy. But since the early 2000s, there have been a string of prominent situations where that ideal wasn’t realized. In the wake of the 2016 election, social media networks have been seen as tools of misinformation and political manipulation. But that wasn’t the first time tech failed us. For instance, dozens of internet cafes were opened in Iraq after the U.S. overthrew Saddam Hussein, and the internet was seen as being instrumental in the democratization of the country. But, Aidinoff said, that same internet access later ended up being a recruitment tool for extremist groups such as ISIS. Hilary Clinton once spoke about the potential of the internet as akin to the fall of the Berlin Wall. “But freedom didn’t happen the way it was supposed to,” Aidinoff said.

That’s a problem for a candidate like Yang — and a problem for any party that wants to view technology as a solution to social ills. Someone framing a campaign around technology as a problem solver and powerful force for good is, in some ways, a few years out of date — as anachronistic as Mark Zuckerberg floating a presidential run. In the end, what’s odd about Yang’s platform might be less that it’s calling for cloud seeding or AI social workers — and more that it’s calling for those things at a time when the relationship between Americans and tech could best be described as “it’s complicated.”

#IFTTT #Politics – FiveThirtyEight #politics #538 #Maggie Koerth-Baker

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lakhwanabhishek · 4 years ago

Text

Artificial Intelligence in E-Commerce and Retail: Potential and Challenges

This decade has been a decade of emerging technologies. High-tech technologies like AI, ML,

Deep Learning

What is E-Commerce?

Electronic Commerce, commonly known as E-Commerce, is the buying and selling of goods and services on the internet or the online media. Businesses associated with an e-commerce presence use an online platform to conduct both online sales and marketing.

THE GROWTH OF E-COMMERCE

Various researches show that the e-commerce sector has achieved a remarkable growth in the past two decades. An incredible average CAGR of 25% between 2000-2014 in beauty and clothing product lines is a clear indication on the growing consumer demand for this sector over the past few years. And guess what, the trend isn’t over yet! According to the new growth projections of e-commerce, revenues will exceed $638 billion in the US alone by 2022. This huge growth in E-commerce has brought about a lot of change in the pre-existing retail sector. Large retailers are forced to sell online. Majority of the new jobs created have been in the

e-commerce sector

, not in retail.

This whole rise in the e-commerce sector can be well-characterized by the following points-:

E-commerce is helping small businesses to sell directly to customers.

B2B companies have started offering B2C- like online ordering experiences.

There has been a tremendous rise in e-commerce marketplaces.

Social media is helping consumers to easily share the products online.

What is A.I. and How can it dominate E-Commerce sector?We must all have read about AI but what it is and how does it exactly relate to E-commerce? Let’s begin:

Artificial Intelligence

AI is a very trending topic in this competitive world. It is today, offering business solutions to small and large enterprises by helping them in improving user experience and increasing brand awareness. Not only this, but it’s also helping start-ups and new manufacturers to set a new example in the industry.

Artificial Intelligence is improving the shopping experience-Artificial Intelligence has begun strengthening its hold in this sector transmuting the business models of many brands and organizations. By analyzing data and identifying the patterns of consumer experience, AI is helping the big companies create user-personalized experience and grow their marketing standards.Let us see through various points how AI is establishing itself in the e-commerce industry-:

Ways through which Artificial Intelligence has dominated the world of e-commerce-

Visual Search Engine

E-commerce companies have started with the use of Artificial Intelligence in the form of visual search engines and helping the user by allowing them to search for what they want to. It has been proved in various researches that visual representation of products is more appealing to the customers because through this, customers can view the size, dimension, design, colour, etc. of the product before ordering it. And it will also help improving the brand image of the product.

· Provides personal recommendations

Artificial Intelligence is using texts, emails in order to provide product recommendations to their customers. It also helps in tracking the user behavior on the internet. AI performs in a way that the search engines and social media display images and ads of the product which interests the customer. Be it Amazon using the data of past purchases of its customers or Netflix using customers’ history for recommendations, AI is rapidly establishing itself among tech-giants.

· Use of Artificial Intelligence in lead generation and sales

Artificial Intelligence extracts the data of customers and track their purchasing pattern. By reducing the burden and ensuring that tasks be done swiftly, AI has helped various brand to generate leads and sales at an increasing rate.

· Services at Low Cost

Artificial Intelligence is providing its services at a very low and affordable rates, which makes the daily targets easy and improves the experience of customers. Chatbots are the software which act as a medium of interaction between customer and service provider. Their working involves, resolving queries and questions of the customers at that moment or in real time. Chatbot is basically a customer-centric approach.

· Helps in e-commerce marketing

Still not convinced about the utility of AI? Lets give you an example of one of the biggest e-commerce giants Amazon and how it is using Artificial Intelligence to provide better customer-experience and drive more profits.How Amazon uses Artificial Intelligence?

Amazon is using Artificial Intelligence in logistics also in the form of re-routing, improving delivery time or making adjustments for efficiency. Amazon is also planning to manufacture drones for delivery of parcels to the doorsteps of the customer, and AI shall be integral for this too.

Major Challenges faced by E-Commerce industryE-commerce industry may be growing at a rapid rate but there do exist certain challenges it has to overcome and here, we shall see what are these challenges and can this “intelligent technology” help them in solving these challenges!

To create customer-centric search

Every business needs to think in a way customer do and so the search keywords need to designed in such a way. Many businesses are using the NLP(Natural Language Processing) to narrow down their keyword search and make it more customer-centric.

· Target potential customers

According to a research, 33% of the leads are not followed up by the sales team which means the interested buyers fall due to the lack of communication. AI is helping in this case also. Its designing special offers which are delivered to the interested buyers to maintain engagement with them.

· Implement virtual assistants

The development in virtual assistants are deep-rooted in NLP and machines capacity to interpret and analyse what people are saying. Amazon’s virtual assistant Alexa, has emerged as one of prominent voices in e-commerce industry and is successfully growing.

· Improve recommendations for customers

Using Artificial Intelligence brands can efficiently and effectively predict customer behavior and can offer helpful recommendations to the customers. For ex- Starbucks recently launched “My Starbucks Barista”, which utilizes Artificial Intelligence to provide more personalized recommendations. That’s it for e-commerce. We discussed on the various applications of AI in this sector through examples of industry giants which are utilizing AI to drive their profits. We also talked about the challenges E-commerce sector has to overcome, and how AI can be used to combat these. Now we shall move to a discussion about AI in another shopping sector, that is AI for retail!

What is Retail?A retail is the business which includes the sale of goods to the public in comparatively small quantity for end consumption rather than resale.

Examples of Retailing includes- Wal-Mart and Target. Online retailers include- Amazon, Netflix, eBay, etc.

How Artificial Intelligence is powering the retail experience?AI has become vital element in digitalisation of any retail store in order to personalize the customer experience and creation of more B2C services. AI bridges the gap between virtual and physical sales channels.

Digitally connected retail stores facilitate unique customer experience and maintain their competitiveness over the time. Be it big retailers or small, it is a proven fact that incorporating AI and other technologies into their day-to-day practices result in increased-productivity and efficiency.

Some examples of using Artificial Intelligence for Retail Stores Artificial Intelligence has completely changed the traditional stores and has taken it to next level in terms of user- personalization and increased efficiency. Here are some examples of how AI is transforming retail sectors

Walgreens uses artificial intelligence to track Flu Spread

The flu has to be treated properly and people can take action to save their families, if they have the right information. Therefore, Walgreens uses the data from various prescriptions of anti-viral to more than 8000 locations and help customers know that how bad the flu is. Walgreens also stock more inventory related to flu products in those infected regions.

Sephora makes it easy to find Makeup

An individual can find the perfect shade makeup in Sephora store, and there is no need to apply a sample on the face. This is possible only because of their Color IQ, which scans a customer face and on its own provides recommendations according to the skin tone of the customer. Similarly, Lip IQ has the same role in providing lipsticks.

Taco Bell helps customers order tacos on the go

Challenges faced by Retail IndustryBut the journey of AI in retail sector isn’t going to be very smooth either. There are some challenges it needs to overcome. Lets discuss them one by one-:l Problems in data-analytics

The biggest problem with the retail sector is that, the data which is available is too vague to translated directly into machine learning. Another problem comes with the algorithms, many of the employees in Retail Analytics do not understand the problem completely and give vague solutions.

New working practicesWith the advancement in technology and AI practices, we can see more likely changes in the work environment. The current trends see the increase of robots, while mental work is still performed by humans. Retailers have to reconsider both the staffing and technology to keep up with the competition.

Costs of new softwareDeveloping customized software’s into the retail business can be more costly and companies may have a need to hire specialist for maintaining those systems. This means there is a requirement for finances and resources for a transition to an AI enabled retail sector.

WHAT EXPERTS SAY ABOUT AI IN RETAIL AND E-COMMERCEWe have seen about the various opportunities and problems associated with AI in retail and e-commerce. Here we shall have a look at the opinions of various industry experts on how AI is transforming the retail and e-commerce sector and which characteristics do they believe is making AI such a dominating technology in this field. -:

According to Frank Beard, Convenience Store and Retail Analyst, Gas Buddy: “AI has opened a world of possibilities for physical retail. The next few years will see continued enhancements to both customer experience and operations, especially with developments in checkout-free technology.”

According to Andrew Scarbrough, Co-Founder, COO, PriceWaiter: “AI in image recognition is now here to stay in eCommerce, and it blows away bar-code scanning, which seemed like the future just a few years ago. It reminds us of the rapid digitization of DVDs to Blu-rays to where at each stage people thought we might be done, at least for a while.”

According to Daniel Druker, CMO, Instart: “AI is revolutionizing the retail industry by making it cost-effective to deliver a completely personalized, immersive and optimized experience for every individual consumer at massive scale.”

According to Chris Miglino, Co-Founder, CEO, Srax: “AI’s biggest benefit to retailers will be the analysis of all the wealth of data they have and creating actionable insights from that data. AI is giving them the opportunity to act on the data.

Conclusion

We all know AI is our future and like all other sectors, the

retail and e-commerce

sector will also not remain untouched from it. But what’s important is to embrace the challenges associated with it and solve them to make this transition into an AI enabled retail smooth.

to be on the forefront of innovations coming to disrupt the Retail sector and embrace the upcoming industry shift.

#b2bservices

#b2b seo

#b2b ecommerce

#b2bsales

0 notes

secretcupcakesublime · 4 years ago

Text

Artificial Intelligence in E-Commerce and Retail: Potential and Challenges

This decade has been a decade of emerging technologies. High-tech technologies like AI, ML,

Deep Learning

etc. have taken the world by storm and are now, establishing a domination in almost every sphere of life! AI is certainly the pick of this bunch! In this article, we shall discuss about the potential of Artificial Intelligence to transform the E-commerce and Retail sector and the challenges it will need to overcome. So, lets begin with E-Commerce! What is E-Commerce?Electronic Commerce, commonly known as E-Commerce, is the buying and selling of goods and services on the internet or the online media. Businesses associated with an e-commerce presence use an online platform to conduct both online sales and marketing.

THE GROWTH OF E-COMMERCE

Various researches show that the e-commerce sector has achieved a remarkable growth in the past two decades. An incredible average CAGR of 25% between 2000-2014 in beauty and clothing product lines is a clear indication on the growing consumer demand for this sector over the past few years. And guess what, the trend isn’t over yet! According to the new growth projections of e-commerce, revenues will exceed $638 billion in the US alone by 2022.This huge growth in E-commerce has brought about a lot of change in the pre-existing retail sector. Large retailers are forced to sell online. Majority of the new jobs created have been in the

e-commerce sector

, not in retail. This whole rise in the e-commerce sector can be well-characterized by the following points-:

E-commerce is helping small businesses to sell directly to customers.

B2B companies have started offering B2C- like online ordering experiences.

There has been a tremendous rise in e-commerce marketplaces.

Social media is helping consumers to easily share the products online.

What is A.I. and How can it dominate E-Commerce sector?We must all have read about AI but what it is and how does it exactly relate to E-commerce? Let’s begin:

Artificial Intelligence

may be defined as a technology that incorporates human intelligence in machines, giving them the potential of thinking or performing certain tasks which usually can’t be completed without the assistance of human intelligence. Visual perception or speech recognition can be possible examples of such tasks. AI is a very trending topic in this competitive world. It is today, offering business solutions to small and large enterprises by helping them in improving user experience and increasing brand awareness. Not only this, but it’s also helping start-ups and new manufacturers to set a new example in the industry. Artificial Intelligence is improving the shopping experience-Artificial Intelligence has begun strengthening its hold in this sector transmuting the business models of many brands and organizations. By analyzing data and identifying the patterns of consumer experience, AI is helping the big companies create user-personalized experience and grow their marketing standards.Let us see through various points how AI is establishing itself in the e-commerce industry-: Ways through which Artificial Intelligence has dominated the world of e-commerce-

Visual Search Engine

E-commerce companies have started with the use of Artificial Intelligence in the form of visual search engines and helping the user by allowing them to search for what they want to.It has been proved in various researches that visual representation of products is more appealing to the customers because through this, customers can view the size, dimension, design, colour, etc. of the product before ordering it. And it will also help improving the brand image of the product.

· Provides personal recommendations

Artificial Intelligence is using texts, emails in order to provide product recommendations to their customers. It also helps in tracking the user behavior on the internet. AI performs in a way that the search engines and social media display images and ads of the product which interests the customer.Be it Amazon using the data of past purchases of its customers or Netflix using customers’ history for recommendations, AI is rapidly establishing itself among tech-giants.

· Use of Artificial Intelligence in lead generation and sales

· Services at Low Cost

Artificial Intelligence is providing its services at a very low and affordable rates, which makes the daily targets easy and improves the experience of customers.Chatbots are the software which act as a medium of interaction between customer and service provider. Their working involves, resolving queries and questions of the customers at that moment or in real time. Chatbot is basically a customer-centric approach.

· Helps in e-commerce marketing

Artificial Intelligence improves the value for money of processes and assist marketing of various brands and enterprises. It provides for an marketing of products on various social media platforms like- Facebook or search engines like Google and Bing.Artificial Intelligence solutions helps in minimizing the CPC and provides you with an optimal utilization of your marketing budget Still not convinced about the utility of AI? Lets give you an example of one of the biggest e-commerce giants Amazon and how it is using Artificial Intelligence to provide better customer-experience and drive more profits.

How Amazon uses Artificial Intelligence?

Amazon is using machine learning to drive product recommendations and for that they are using a combination of Collaborative Filtering and Next-in-Sequence models in order to make predictions on goods and services required by the customer Amazon is using Artificial Intelligence in logistics also in the form of re-routing, improving delivery time or making adjustments for efficiency. Amazon is also planning to manufacture drones for delivery of parcels to the doorsteps of the customer, and AI shall be integral for this too. Major Challenges faced by E-Commerce industry

E-commerce industry may be growing at a rapid rate but there do exist certain challenges it has to overcome and here, we shall see what are these challenges and can this “intelligent technology” help them in solving these challenges!

To create customer-centric search

Every business needs to think in a way customer do and so the search keywords need to designed in such a way.Many businesses are using the NLP(Natural Language Processing) to narrow down their keyword search and make it more customer-centric.

· Target potential customers

According to a research, 33% of the leads are not followed up by the sales team which means the interested buyers fall due to the lack of communication.AI is helping in this case also. Its designing special offers which are delivered to the interested buyers to maintain engagement with them.

· Implement virtual assistants

The development in virtual assistants are deep-rooted in NLP and machines capacity to interpret and analyse what people are saying.Amazon’s virtual assistant Alexa, has emerged as one of prominent voices in e-commerce industry and is successfully growing.

· Improve recommendations for customers

That’s it for e-commerce. We discussed on the various applications of AI in this sector through examples of industry giants which are utilizing AI to drive their profits. We also talked about the challenges E-commerce sector has to overcome, and how AI can be used to combat these. Now we shall move to a discussion about AI in another shopping sector, that is AI for retail! What is Retail?

A retail is the business which includes the sale of goods to the public in comparatively small quantity for end consumption rather than resale.

Examples of Retailing includes- Wal-Mart and Target. Online retailers include- Amazon, Netflix, eBay, etc. How Artificial Intelligence is powering the retail experience?

AI has become vital element in digitalisation of any retail store in order to personalize the customer experience and creation of more B2C services. AI bridges the gap between virtual and physical sales channels. Digitally connected retail stores facilitate unique customer experience and maintain their competitiveness over the time. Be it big retailers or small, it is a proven fact that incorporating AI and other technologies into their day-to-day practices result in increased-productivity and efficiency. Some examples of using Artificial Intelligence for Retail StoresArtificial Intelligence has completely changed the traditional stores and has taken it to next level in terms of user- personalization and increased efficiency. Here are some examples of how AI is transforming retail sectors

Walgreens uses artificial intelligence to track Flu Spread

Sephora makes it easy to find Makeup

Taco Bell helps customers order tacos on the go

A person doesn’t have to wait, if he/she want tacos urgently. Taco Bell was the first restaurant to incorporate AI in food ordering. Tacobot works with Slack in order to communicate with customers and take orders. Challenges faced by Retail IndustryBut the journey of AI in retail sector isn’t going to be very smooth either. There are some challenges it needs to overcome. Lets discuss them one by one-:l Problems in data-analytics The biggest problem with the retail sector is that, the data which is available is too vague to translated directly into machine learning. Another problem comes with the algorithms, many of the employees in Retail Analytics do not understand the problem completely and give vague solutions. New working practicesWith the advancement in technology and AI practices, we can see more likely changes in the work environment. The current trends see the increase of robots, while mental work is still performed by humans. Retailers have to reconsider both the staffing and technology to keep up with the competition. Costs of new softwareDeveloping customized software’s into the retail business can be more costly and companies may have a need to hire specialist for maintaining those systems. This means there is a requirement for finances and resources for a transition to an AI enabled retail sector. WHAT EXPERTS SAY ABOUT AI IN RETAIL AND E-COMMERCEWe have seen about the various opportunities and problems associated with AI in retail and e-commerce. Here we shall have a look at the opinions of various industry experts on how AI is transforming the retail and e-commerce sector and which characteristics do they believe is making AI such a dominating technology in this field. -:

Conclusion We all know AI is our future and like all other sectors, the

retail and e-commerce

sector will also not remain untouched from it. But what’s important is to embrace the challenges associated with it and solve them to make this transition into an AI enabled retail smooth.

to be on the forefront of innovations coming to disrupt the Retail sector and embrace the upcoming industry shift.

#b2b website #b2b ecommerce b2b content marketing b2b seo b2b market research companies b2bservices Ecommerce #b2b ecommerce b2b content marketing b2b market research companies b2b seo b2bservices Ecommerce #b2b market research companies b2b ecommerce b2b seo b2b content marketing b2bservices Ecommerce

0 notes

lucyariablog · 8 years ago

Text

How and Why (or Why Not) to Build a Chatbot

Let’s say your organization has the best content in your industry. Prospective customers go to your site, enter their questions in your search box, navigate through a few clicks, and – voilà – they get instant answers to their questions.

Excellent. For today. But are you ready for tomorrow, when your competitors lure those customers away with a superior Q-and-A experience? They won’t do it by hiring thousands of people to take phone calls. In 2011, Gartner predicted “by 2020, customers will manage 85% of their relationship with the enterprise without interacting with a human.”

Customers will manage 85% of business relationships w/o humans by 2020, says @Gartner_Inc. Click To Tweet

How will your competitors lure those curious customers away from your superior content if not with human beings?

With chatbots. Friendly, helpful chatbots.

Unless you beat them to it.

So says Cruce Saunders, founder and principal content engineer at [A], in his Intelligent Content Conference talk Engineering Content for Chatbots, AI, and Marketing Automation. In this article, I sum up some of Cruce’s advice. Unless noted, all images and quotations in this post come from his talk.

Chat-whats?

Chances are, you’ve interacted with a chatbot, even if you didn’t know it. A chatbot (also called a bot, a virtual assistant, or an intelligent personal assistant) is “software that automates the task of talking with people, especially over the internet,” says Kristina Podnar in this article from which I borrowed the animated example below. This example shows Taco Bell’s chatbot – “tacobot” – sounding downright personable (“Sounds good,” and so on.)

Some chatbots use artificial intelligence (AI) and some don’t. A simple, scripted chatbot, like tacobot, uses programmed-response technology based on rules or decision trees. “Its paths are limited, and users select from defined options,” according to a recent UX Booth article. On the other hand, the article explains, an AI-powered chatbot – like Google, Siri, or Alexa – responds based on machine-learning or natural-language-processing systems. It deciphers people’s input, responds based on what it knows so far, and then “turns the user’s input into more data,” continuously updating its algorithms.

AI-powered or not, chatbots aim to respond to basic requests in real time, “freeing up humans to do more creative problem solving,” says Cruce. He describes chatbots as an “increasingly interactive and vital way to get at content.”

#Chatbots are an increasingly interactive & vital way to get at content, says @MrCruce. #intelcontent Click To Tweet

Why you might want to build a chatbot

Not every company needs a chatbot. You may want to build one if certain queries could be handled in an automated way. A successful implementation, according to the UX Booth article, can have the following benefits:

Increased brand affinity and loyalty

Reinforced brand voice and personality

Differentiation from the competition

Increased engagement and interaction times

Higher conversion rates

Rich data to better understand users

Chatbot examples

Cruce cites three progressively human-like chatbots:

Mastercard chatbot (via the Facebook Messenger app)

Alexa (via Amazon Echo)

Nadia (created by Soul Machines and powered by IBM’s Watson software)

The Mastercard chatbot, which communicates via text messages in Facebook Messenger, answers questions that don’t need to be handled by a person: How much did I spend in restaurants in September? What are my offers? What are the benefits of my card? How do I reset my password?

Amazon Echo’s intelligent personal assistant, Alexa, moves the conversation from text to voice. You talk to Alexa and Alexa talks back. This assistant goes beyond answering your questions; it can play music, create to-do lists, set alarms, stream podcasts, play audiobooks, and provide updates on weather, traffic, and news. This type of assistant can even be programmed to have a little fun. (Siri is a similar example. Try telling Siri, “I see a little silhouetto of a man”; the response especially tickles me when delivered in one of the Aussie voices.)

The Soul Machine’s intelligent personal assistant, Nadia, is an experimental avatar designed by a team in New Zealand and Australia. Cate Blanchett created the voice recordings. If you talk with Nadia, “she” sees and hears you, adapting her answers according to your tone and facial expression to fit your presumed emotional state. Here’s what Nadia looks and sounds like:

Chatbot content behind the scenes

Most chatbot platforms depend on authors to develop an independent repository of questions and answers. Often, the authors duplicate this content from other systems. This redundant effort is expensive. As Cruce says,

Subject-matter experts need to be able to maintain content in a single source. The more overlapping content repositories we introduce, the more effort, cost, and risk we introduce. Chatbot content should exist in the core CMS.

#Chatbot content should exist in the core CMS, says @MrCruce. #intelcontent Click To Tweet

Within your CMS, chatbot content could look something like this:

Within the CMS, the chatbot content can live alongside related articles and documentation instead of living in a separate chatbot platform. “The chatbot ideally calls that content in real time,” Cruce says.

Chatbots and humans

When visitors interact with a chatbot, they don’t necessarily know it’s not a person. It’s up to the chatbot owner to clarify – by the image and the chatbot’s name, for example – that visitors are interacting with a machine. Here, for example, you can tell (or can you?) that Cruce is talking with a chatbot.

Eric Savitz, a Forbes writer, describes chatbots as giving people a self-service experience that combines “the conversational attributes of live chat or a phone call” with “the ultimate in automation – zero human contact.”

Granted, robot-powered customer experiences can be annoying or weird in these early generations of the technology. Today’s chatbots often miss the mark, sometimes embarrassingly so (for the company anyhow – entertainingly so for the rest of the world). Many high-performing customer service and sales chatbots have an option to hand off questions they can’t answer to human representatives. In this way, robots and humans work together to serve customers.

Even though chatbot technology is far from perfect, it holds undeniable potential – in a way that scales – for answering the most common questions asked by your most promising audiences. There’s no fighting the use of chatbots. Someday, they will be as common as automated phone systems. How about we make them better?

Chatbots hold undeniable potential to scale answers to common questions of audience. @MrCruce #intelcontent Click To Tweet

HANDPICKED RELATED CONTENT: Automating Your Customer Interactions: Get Ready for Chatbots

Why chatbots need input from content strategists and content engineers

When creating chatbot content, companies often make the same mistake as when creating any new type of content: They copy and paste from existing sources instead of a single source. Ideally, you set up your system so that all chatbot content – primarily compact answers to common questions – flows directly from the same CMS that supplies your other customer-facing content.

Cruce is talking about classic content reuse, aka COPE content: create once, publish everywhere.

On the theme of reuse, Cruce announced, midway through his talk, that, at that moment, history was being made. SpaceX, Elon Musk’s private space-flight company, had just launched Falcon 9, “the world’s first re-flight of an orbital-class rocket” according to this video.

youtube

A part of the rocket had been refurbished after an earlier flight, something that had never been done before. The savings were estimated in many millions of dollars.

Cruce drew the parallel: Our content assets are like those rocket assets. We make significant investments in our content assets. Why in the world wouldn’t we reuse them if we can?

Setting up your content for reuse is easier to say than to do. You need to work with a content strategist (or at least think like one) to develop appropriate content models and metadata, among other things. You may need to work with a front-end and a back-end content strategist.

And you’ll need to work with a content engineer to connect the chatbot with your CMS, among other things.

In case you’re thinking of going DIY and tackling the strategy and engineering of chatbots yourself, I can only wish you luck. A blog post like this can’t give you the guidance you need. I include this diagram below (with chatbot functionality represented by robot heads) not so much for you to study as for you to appreciate the need to collaborate with people with backgrounds in content strategy and content engineering. Few of us could create this sort of diagram on our own:

Going DIY for your #chatbot? Good luck, says @MarciaRJohnston. #intelcontent Click To Tweet

The new multichannel content stack:

Click to enlarge

Image source

For a deeper dive into the techier aspects of this topic, see Cruce’s Resource Guide: Engineering Content for Bots, AI, and Marketing Automation.

HANDPICKED RELATED CONTENT: New Tech Friends on the Marketing Block

5 steps to develop a chatbot

When you’re ready to develop a chatbot, follow these steps: journey, research, model, engineer, and deploy, as shared by Cruce.

Step 1: Map the customer journey.

Journey maps “show us the customer experience in context.” Work on your journey maps with a content strategist and business stakeholders “to understand what your content needs to be doing in its context.”

HANDPICKED RELATED CONTENT: What to Do When Your Buyers’ Journey Isn’t Linear (Hint: It Never Is)

Step 2: Research what your audience wants to know.

Figure out your audience’s burning questions and the terms they use to phrase those questions. You can do this research in various ways: gather SEO data, review session data – even get radical and talk with people. Whatever it takes to get inside prospective customers’ heads.

HANDPICKED RELATED CONTENT: What Are Your Customers Thinking? Search Secrets Hiding in Plain Sight

Step 3: Build the content model.

Create a content model that specifies the structure of each of your team’s commonly created content types. Also, specify the ways those content types relate to each other. Build your content model with a content engineer and content strategist. Without an accurate model of your organization’s content, you can’t know what kind of technology you need or how it needs to be set up.

HANDPICKED RELATED CONTENT: Structured Content: Get Started With Content Models

Step 4: Engineer the technology to support your content model.

The content engineer maps your content model to technology. Cruce had a lot to say about content engineering that I couldn’t squish into this post even if I had understood it all. (Code snippets, anyone? Microdata, schemas, taxonomy, and clean-content APIs?) Here’s what you need to know: Find yourself a good content engineer.

Step 5: Deploy your chatbot – when it’s ready.

Before you unleash your bot on the world, test it in development, staging, and production environments. Work out as many kinks as you can before your prospective customers make it say silly things. Work on the voice, tone, and message targeting and interactions with a content strategist who understands interactive content.

HANDPICKED RELATED CONTENT: Why Automation Is the Future of Content Creation

Conclusion

Increasingly, when we humans get curious about something, we expect answers to materialize instantly. Chatbots – done well – provide a scalable way for companies to fulfill that expectation.

Done poorly, of course, chatbots frustrate people and damage brands. Don’t bother making a chatbot unless your company is committed to dedicating the resources needed for creating a positive user experience.

As Cruce says, “Consumers are increasingly talking with our content, asking it questions. We need to make sure our content can talk back.”

Is your content team creating chatbots? Thinking about them? Let us know in a comment.

Here’s an excerpt from Cruce’s talk:

youtube

Sign up for our weekly Content Strategy for Marketers e-newsletter, which features exclusive stories and insights from CMI Chief Content Adviser Robert Rose. If you’re like many other marketers we meet, you’ll come to look forward to reading his thoughts every Saturday.

Cover image by Joseph Kalinowski/Content Marketing Institute

The post How and Why (or Why Not) to Build a Chatbot appeared first on Content Marketing Institute.

from http://contentmarketinginstitute.com/2017/08/how-why-build-chatbot/

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hotspreadpage · 8 years ago

Text

How and Why (or Why Not) to Build a Chatbot

Customers will manage 85% of business relationships w/o humans by 2020, says @Gartner_Inc. Click To Tweet

How will your competitors lure those curious customers away from your superior content if not with human beings?

With chatbots. Friendly, helpful chatbots.

Unless you beat them to it.

Chat-whats?

#Chatbots are an increasingly interactive & vital way to get at content, says @MrCruce. #intelcontent Click To Tweet

Why you might want to build a chatbot

Increased brand affinity and loyalty

Reinforced brand voice and personality

Differentiation from the competition

Increased engagement and interaction times

Higher conversion rates

Rich data to better understand users

Chatbot examples

Cruce cites three progressively human-like chatbots:

Mastercard chatbot (via the Facebook Messenger app)

Alexa (via Amazon Echo)

Nadia (created by Soul Machines and powered by IBM’s Watson software)

//player.ooyala.com/static/v4/stable/4.10.6/skin-plugin/iframe.html?ec=w2a2FnYTE6VCuTLs_DI6Kl66gh-0wJLB&pbid=5ad1946db28d45cdb4325c91c7751266&pcode=FvbGkyOtJVFD33j_Rd0xPLSo0Jiv

Chatbot content behind the scenes

#Chatbot content should exist in the core CMS, says @MrCruce. #intelcontent Click To Tweet

Within your CMS, chatbot content could look something like this:

Chatbots and humans

Chatbots hold undeniable potential to scale answers to common questions of audience. @MrCruce #intelcontent Click To Tweet

HANDPICKED RELATED CONTENT: Automating Your Customer Interactions: Get Ready for Chatbots

Why chatbots need input from content strategists and content engineers

Cruce is talking about classic content reuse, aka COPE content: create once, publish everywhere.

youtube

A part of the rocket had been refurbished after an earlier flight, something that had never been done before. The savings were estimated in many millions of dollars.

Cruce drew the parallel: Our content assets are like those rocket assets. We make significant investments in our content assets. Why in the world wouldn’t we reuse them if we can?

And you’ll need to work with a content engineer to connect the chatbot with your CMS, among other things.

Going DIY for your #chatbot? Good luck, says @MarciaRJohnston. #intelcontent Click To Tweet

The new multichannel content stack:

Click to enlarge

Image source

For a deeper dive into the techier aspects of this topic, see Cruce’s Resource Guide: Engineering Content for Bots, AI, and Marketing Automation.

HANDPICKED RELATED CONTENT: New Tech Friends on the Marketing Block

5 steps to develop a chatbot

When you’re ready to develop a chatbot, follow these steps: journey, research, model, engineer, and deploy, as shared by Cruce.

Step 1: Map the customer journey.

HANDPICKED RELATED CONTENT: What to Do When Your Buyers’ Journey Isn’t Linear (Hint: It Never Is)

Step 2: Research what your audience wants to know.

HANDPICKED RELATED CONTENT: What Are Your Customers Thinking? Search Secrets Hiding in Plain Sight

Step 3: Build the content model.

HANDPICKED RELATED CONTENT: Structured Content: Get Started With Content Models

Step 4: Engineer the technology to support your content model.

Step 5: Deploy your chatbot – when it’s ready.

HANDPICKED RELATED CONTENT: Why Automation Is the Future of Content Creation

Conclusion

Increasingly, when we humans get curious about something, we expect answers to materialize instantly. Chatbots – done well – provide a scalable way for companies to fulfill that expectation.

As Cruce says, “Consumers are increasingly talking with our content, asking it questions. We need to make sure our content can talk back.”

Is your content team creating chatbots? Thinking about them? Let us know in a comment.

Here’s an excerpt from Cruce’s talk:

youtube

Cover image by Joseph Kalinowski/Content Marketing Institute

The post How and Why (or Why Not) to Build a Chatbot appeared first on Content Marketing Institute.

How and Why (or Why Not) to Build a Chatbot syndicated from http://ift.tt/2maPRjm

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martechadvisor-blog · 8 years ago

Text

Interview with Prayag Narula, CEO and Co-founder of LeadGenius

In this interview, Prayag discusses how being a marketer has never been both easy and difficult all at the same time. He explains the need to move away from generic messaging for true personalization and why it's important to develop a data-scientist approach to overcome the data nightmare that has befallen marketers. This Forbes 30 under 30 (2012) UC Berkeley alum describes himself as, “a standup guy who loves history, poetry, startups and Scotch.”

Ginger Conlon:

Welcome to MarTech Advisor’s executive interview series. I'm Ginger Conlon, a Contributing Editor to MarTech Advisor, joining us today is Prayag Narula who is CEO and Co-founder of LeadGenius. Welcome Prayag.

Prayag Narula:

Thank you Ginger, so glad to be here.

Q: Ginger Conlon:

So glad you're with us today. We are going to talk about trends and opportunities with LeadGen and marketing today. So, let's talk briefly, let's kick off talking briefly about LeadGenius, how would you describe it in a sentence? What is LeadGenius and what is its unique value proposition?

A: Prayag Narula:

So, LeadGenius is a top of the funnel marketing automation company which helps its customers identify the best markets and map out the best companies in those markets and identify the best decision makers in those companies and market to them, and our unique value proposition is we use combination of cutting-edge artificial intelligence and machine learning and combine it with actual human intelligence to create the best quality insights and data available in the market so that our customers can target the best customers and know with confidence that the people that they are targeting, the company they’re targeting are the customer that are most likely to convert and are high value prospects.

Q: Ginger Conlon:

Excellent, I love the data and intuition combination. So, let's talk about LeadGen and marketing. So, there is so much customer and prospect data available today, there's an ever growing list of channels and touch points, but it really doesn't seem to be any easier for marketers to build their sales funnel. What do you see as the challenge there?

A: Prayag Narula:

I think there are multiple challenges that are facing marketers and being a marketer has never been easier or never been harder, at the same time, so, we are living in some very interesting times. I think the number one issue facing a marketer today is that marketers are expected to be data scientists, they are expected to be able to consume a lot of data, there's more and more data available today than ever before and marketers are expected to consume all of that data together and create a marketing strategy and execute on that strategy, and do it in a manner that looks at all the data that’s available to them, and at the same time the tools that are available to them to consume this data are very limited.

So, the primary tools that are available to marketers and marketing automation platforms, Marketo, HubSpot, Pardot, all these platforms they are built for a different era in my opinion, they were built for 20th century but they are not built around, what I would call the modern principles of any kind of modern software, artificial intelligence, big data. So

there is this kind of disconnect between what's expected of marketers and the resources that are available to them and that's I think the number one challenge that I think marketers face today

But at the same time, it's never been a better time to be a marketer. There is, as I said, so much data available to you as a marketer, you can really use that data to identify the best customer, to really hone in on the best strategy and use the best channels to target those customers, a lot of these channels didn't exist five years ago and a lot of these, the data that is available to take advantage of these channels also didn’t exist five years ago. So, these are exciting times, I think there's going to be a lot of change that’s going to happen in marketing automation in the next five to ten years and I'm really excited about the future and both being a part of the industry and as a CEO who has a decent sized marketing team in our organization.

Q: Ginger Conlon:

Excellent. So, we're going to talk more about the future in a few minutes but first, I want to ask you, you talked about that gap between what is expected of marketers and what they are able to do, how can some marketers close that gap?

A: Prayag Narula:

The first thing to do is to really kind of look at a holistic picture and figure out what are the most important priorities for you as a marketer and try to build your marketing stack or try to build your solution that you're going to rely on around your problems. Marketing automation has seen a lot of new players come in in the last five years, so, it's easy today to get distracted by different tools that are available and there's a lot of promise that’s being made. So, first thing is to

cut through the noise and talk about the value a particular solution can provide and how does that fit inside your marketing stack

I think that's the number one key, first step that marketers can take.

So, get to the crux of the value that you're getting from a solution rather than getting distracted by the bells and whistles. For example, for us, when I go and talk about our solution, we have a fairly complicated technology that we have built, one of the big outputs that we provide to you is measurable improvement, in the map of your target market, the information you have about your decision makers and the contact information that you have about decision makers, you can measure that with a fairly simple exercise. So, I encourage all our customers to go and do that measurement so they know in the end, at the very core what they are getting. So, I think that's the approach that I recommend all marketers use. So, that will be the number one thing.

The second thing is, it is important for marketers to think like data scientists. I think marketers of tomorrow are going to have to know the basic principles of data science, what's possible and what's not, and I think to be able to develop that kind of thinking is going to help marketers in the future, and even right now that kind of thinking can help them hone in on how to use the stack that they have built to its best potential.

Q: Ginger Conlon:

So, one of the things that you mentioned was tools and I’d like talk a little bit about LeadGen technologies because they present a great opportunity, like you said, to help marketers get to the right prospects that are most likely to convert and most likely to be high value customers. So, in terms of the lead gen technologies, what is an opportunity that marketers you see overlooking that if they focused on a bit more would actually make a big positive impact for them?

A: Prayag Narula:

Yeah, that's a great question. So, I think one thing that is becoming immensely important in today’s world is moving away from generic messaging to a lot more personalization and personalization I'm not just talking about from an individual perspective but even from a segment perspective. So,

being able to personalize your pitch, your message, to the target audience that you are targeting is very, very important

I think it's more important today than it has ever been before because there is so much noise out there and there's so much competition out there, everyone is trying to get the eyeballs from their customers but customers are also distracted and have various places in which they can go and engage with various vendors.

So, personalization is really, really, really important, especially I think B2B has really lagged behind, personalization, and I think that's a key thing that most B2B marketers are now starting to see the impact of. So, for example, what we recommend for our customers is hey, hone in, don’t just use form of (11:27) graphic as a way of segmentation but also use a personal, for example, stage of the company, stage of the decision makers, their state of mind, their problem, use that as a fundamental way in which you're segmenting your customers and at the same time, try to collect information and data around your customer segment that helps you drive even more personalization.

So, for example, it's not enough today to go and say, hey, we are selling into healthcare companies in California, it’s important to understand that a healthcare company or a hospital that has 30 beds, the decision makers there have very different problems than a conglomerate that might have dozens of hospitals under them totaling thousands of beds. So, being able to hone your message on what stage a decision maker is in, how long have they been in an organization, what are their top problems, what is the company’s top problem and what are the various decision makers because every decision maker will also have their own different priorities, understanding those priorities and driving personalization using that, it's possible today because there's so much data available and it's very important to use that to make sure that you're targeting the right people with the right message and I think that's where the future of marketing is and I think that's what marketers have started to understand the value of that.

Ginger Conlon:

Absolutely, I think that's one of the reasons that account based marketing is becoming so large of a focus these days.

Prayag Narula:

Yeah, absolutely and I think account based marketing is a very good place to start but just a place to start. Account based marketing, the way customers are using it is only for enterprise, only for when they are selling into enterprises, there's a lot more you can learn from account based marketing even when you’re selling into mid-market accounts, even SMB accounts, same principles apply. I think account based marketing is just the beginning, I look at account based marketing as a way of thinking almost, and I think there's a lot to learn from these concepts and apply it to all aspects of a marketers processes.

Q: Ginger Conlon:

Exactly. So, one of the things that you were talking about just now is all these different types of data to focus on the personalization which I love, I wonder if some marketers feel a little overwhelmed by how do we get all that data and are there any challenges in terms of what you see with lead gen technologies where marketers might feel overwhelmed by that or any other challenges that you're seeing and what advice would you have for them to overcome those challenges?

A: Prayag Narula:

That's another great question. That's a question that our customers have asked us most because as we are moving away from list buying as a way to collect data to actually looking at holistically at what my data tells me, that's a big problem that the customers are facing, how do I collate all this data together. I think one of the biggest advice that I give to our customers and people who come to us for help is don't overcomplicate things, even though you need a lot of data, you don’t need a lot of data vendors, you don’t need to buy data from 19 different or 20 different vendors which I’ve seen a lot of. We help our customers bring down the number of vendors that they're buying from to a manageable number.

So, what we do, for example, is become the ground truth of what is the right data, what is the accurate data and then use that as the benchmark for any other data sources that they might be using, so, to bring down both the cost and the complication that occurs from working with too many different vendors. So, I think thinking simple in terms of just trying to get the most out of your existing stack and using what we provide or what you can build probably on your own if you're a smaller organization as a benchmark, hey, here is the right data, here’s the most accurate data and calculating backwards from there, so you save the cost on the data vendors and complications, I think that would be a good step. There's a lot that goes into it but my number one advice is: don’t complicate things and use a ground truth to benchmark everyone that comes to you, and we can help our customers do that and honestly, if our customers are not ready for us we can say, hey, at a small level, at a very small level, you can even do it yourself. So, that's kind of how I recommend solving that problem of too much data and too many data vendors.

Q: Ginger Conlon:

That’s great. I think some marketers feel overwhelmed by data, so that’s a great piece of advice. So, let's talk about customer experience because that is such a hot topic and one of the interesting things about lead gen technology is it seems by targeting the right people you're probably actually giving prospective customers a better customer experience from right at the outset of the relationship. So, any recommendations for marketers in that regard in terms of improving the prospects experience by using a lead gen technology?

A: Prayag Narula:

Absolutely and I think the end to end experience is becoming more important than ever. There are so many ways in which customers are communicating with each other, you have to be really cognizant of consistency in your messaging and your commitment to your customers, all the way when you make the first connection to all the way to when you're delivering your product and all the way to when they are ready to move on even a different vendor, the whole experience needs to be tightly integrated and needs to be consistent and it needs to be tailored in a lot of ways to individual customers.

So,

marketers responsibility does not anymore go away as soon as they pass the lead on to a sales team, that’s kind of old school thinking and that's not viable anymore. Marketing needs to be involved in the entire customer journey, all the way from first point of contact to service delivery

But there's a flip side of that is because you have more responsibilities means you have more budget available and more resources available to you, you can go and ask your company and your CEO’s for more budget to integrate that entire experience and use that to craft and execute on a much more integrated strategy right from the start.

The number one complaint I used to get from people that we were working with is, hey, we really are bought into this idea of personalization and micro-segmentation but we don't have budget to power that. But if you can integrate that into an entire customer journey you will have more budget available to you. So, it’s very important for marketers to think of customers entire buyer journey and use the segmentation approach and use a micro-segmentation personalization approach from the get go, even though it means that it might cost more to start an engagement, but, in the long term it’s going to yield lot better results in customer satisfaction, in retention, in upgrades, it’s all going to pay off in the end but it's important to look at it holistically as much.

Ginger Conlon:

Right, that makes sense. If you're kick off right you’re going to get more high value customers to begin with, higher revenue potential, low cost to serve.

Prayag Narula:

That’s exactly right.

Q: Ginger Conlon:

Excellent, I love that. So, you were talking before that you’re excited for the next five years or so, so, I wanted to wrap up with a look forward. What specifically, give us a specific example of what you're excited about in two areas, one, in the market in general and one in the other, anything coming up with LeadGenius that we should know about that you’re planning?

A: Prayag Narula:

Absolutely. I think they are very interrelated questions. I look at where the market is going and we want to move with the market but at the same time influence the market in what we feel is the right direction to move the market into. So, those are very closely related questions. I think the market is moving away from this concept of just mass amount of email as a way to get engagement, just buying low quality lead lists, putting it into Marketo and hoping that someone buys, and sending unsophisticated and not very relevant emails, and honestly, I blame the whole concept of predictable revenue that came out in 2010-2011, I think that really, really changed the mindset of the market for the worst, prioritized short term gains over long term gains.

The fact that you and I are getting 50 emails every day from marketers for whom we are not even the right customer is an example of how that whole idea of predictable revenue has gone off the rail. It was a terrible idea to begin with, it was a terrible idea to do it at scale, even worse to do it across the market. So, I'm glad that trend is going away, I think that’s a terrible experience for anyone and I’m glad that’s getting killed now. So,

I think the future is around personalization, the future is around segmentation and micro-segmentation and speaking to a customer about their problems rather than pitching a product and hoping that someone is going to buy it

it’s more who are my right customers, how can I segment those into not just small, medium and large but other segments that make sense for them and then using that to drive personalization across marketing. I think that's a very good development that has happened, we can extrapolate that and hopefully what my vision is in 10 years we’ll be pitched the most relevant things, the most relevant product to us in the most relevant manner that solves our problem and we will do away with this problem of random messages that have nothing to do with us or don’t add any value, that's my vision for the future.

LeadGenius, we’ve always been very excited about personalization and something that's coming out, that has actually recently come out is this new product that helps customers identify those segments and look at it from a strategic perspective. So, a tool that helps you understand where have you been successful in the past and the potential for the future and relationship to works, between those to help you understand what markets you had more success, what is the potential of that in the future and using that to help identify the best market and then map the best markets for you. I’m really excited about that, I think that drives a lot of what we talked about, the personalization, the micro-segmentation and so on, that helps marketers do it in a very automated manner and I’m very excited about that.

Ginger Conlon:

So, no more random acts of marketing, it will be personalized.

Prayag Narula:

Yes! No warning random emails and marketers no more sending emails to just three groups of customers. Have 25 different groups, that's my challenge to every marketer watching this, create 25 different segments of your customers and identify different segments and personalize it to those segments, that’s my challenge to everyone that’s watching today.

Ginger Conlon:

Excellent, I love that. So, Prayag, thank you so much and I want to thank everyone who's here joining us today. I’m so glad you’re here, it was awesome. I want to also tell everyone that Prayag and I are going to talk about what's important for marketers skills, the skillsets that marketers need today and as someone who works with marketers and hires marketers, I know he’s got some great advice in store, so be sure to check out that video as well and again, thank you all for being here.

This article was first appeared on MarTech Advisor

#martech #marketing #technology #business #cmo

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secretcupcakesublime · 4 years ago

Text

Artificial Intelligence in E-Commerce and Retail: Potential and Challenges

This decade has been a decade of emerging technologies. High-tech technologies like AI, ML,

Deep Learning

What is E-Commerce?

THE GROWTH OF E-COMMERCE

e-commerce sector

, not in retail.

This whole rise in the e-commerce sector can be well-characterized by the following points-:

E-commerce is helping small businesses to sell directly to customers.

B2B companies have started offering B2C- like online ordering experiences.

There has been a tremendous rise in e-commerce marketplaces.

Social media is helping consumers to easily share the products online.

What is A.I. and How can it dominate E-Commerce sector?We must all have read about AI but what it is and how does it exactly relate to E-commerce? Let’s begin:

Artificial Intelligence

Ways through which Artificial Intelligence has dominated the world of e-commerce-

Visual Search Engine

· Provides personal recommendations

· Use of Artificial Intelligence in lead generation and sales

· Services at Low Cost

· Helps in e-commerce marketing

To create customer-centric search

· Target potential customers

· Implement virtual assistants

· Improve recommendations for customers

What is Retail?A retail is the business which includes the sale of goods to the public in comparatively small quantity for end consumption rather than resale.

Examples of Retailing includes- Wal-Mart and Target. Online retailers include- Amazon, Netflix, eBay, etc.

Walgreens uses artificial intelligence to track Flu Spread

Sephora makes it easy to find Makeup

Taco Bell helps customers order tacos on the go

Conclusion

We all know AI is our future and like all other sectors, the

retail and e-commerce

sector will also not remain untouched from it. But what’s important is to embrace the challenges associated with it and solve them to make this transition into an AI enabled retail smooth.

to be on the forefront of innovations coming to disrupt the Retail sector and embrace the upcoming industry shift.

Source:

whizzystack.co

#b2b ecommerce

#Ecommerce

#b2b content marketing

#b2b seo

#b2b marketing blog

#b2b marketing blog #b2b seo

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