Sentience: The Coming AI Revolution and the Implications for Marketing

Each technological epoch is built on top of the previous. The advent of computers allowed the advent of the internet, which in-turn allowed for the advent of social. The next epoch is increasingly considered to be the AI (Artificial Intelligence) revolution- where the world's information is hierarchically ordered to create what is, ostensibly, consciousness but with intelligence greater than every living human being on the planet. In effect, the internet is set to wake up. This is the endeavor of a number of organizations, with Google leading the charge. Ray Kurzweil, the head of engineering at Google, thinks they will get there by 2029. In the run up to this there are many applications that will be created that will start to make us see the incredible power in, what will likely be considered to be, a new utility- alongside gas, electricity and water. If only half of what these engineers are saying comes to fruition, then the way that we navigate our waking world is about to undergo the biggest transformation that any single generation has ever experienced. This book explores the incredible potential of the far reach of AI, the road leading up to it, the tantalizing possibilities for marketers and what they can do now to start to prepare.