This post is a blend of, and inspired by Carole Cadwalladr and her stunning TED Talk 2025 plus Sarah Wynn-Williams shocking book, Careless People – recently released.

 

Big tech companies and their bosses have a lot of power – some suggest – to influence, and even change, our governments, our laws, our democracy, our privacy, our data, our freedom, create fear,  stop whistleblowers, fragment society, polarise opinions, spread hate, enable abuse, create a controlling cult, and in return, take our money, time and data. How can this be? An even better question is: How can we stop this?

This post is inspired specifically by two talented professionals  with these 3 must-watch/must-read items:
1. Journalist, Carole Cadwalladr and her two stunning TED Talks 2025 and 2019.
2. Author and former Facebook global public policy director Sarah Wynn-Williams’ shocking book, Careless People (just released, although she is already banned from promoting it).
3. Carole Cadwalladr’s final piece for the Observer: ‘It’s not too late to stop Trump and the tech broligarchy from controlling our lives, but we must act now’ The Observer 20 Apr. See links at the end.

 

First, let’s look at ‘what is a broligarch?’, then ‘how do they control us?’, and finally, most importantly, how can we stop them?

WHAT IS A BROLIGARCH?

A broligarchy is a ‘small group of men who control a situation or political power structure. It differs from an ordinary oligarchy in that a broligarchy carries with it a connotation of toxic masculinity.’

Broligarchs comes from a play on bro + oligarchy. Wikipedia suggests broligarchs are ultra-wealthy men often in the tech industry, who wield significant political and economic influence while embodying a certain “tech bro” culture.

ChatGPT defines ‘tech bro’ as ‘a slang term used to describe a certain kind of (usually male) figure in the tech industry who blends Silicon Valley startup culture, tech optimism, and bro culture – often with a dose of arroganceor tone-deafness.’ ChatGPT’s definition continues with these broligarch descriptors:

• Works in tech, usually a startup or big-name company (Meta, Google, etc.)
• Often involved in entrepreneurship, coding, crypto, AI, or VC funding
• Talks like a thought leader—buzzwords, big visions, “disruption”
• Bro-ish attitude: overconfident, self-important, sometimes dismissive of regulation or social responsibility
• Might wear the “uniform”: hoodie/t-shirt/baseball cap

Journalist, Stephen Poole, highlighted META’s CEO: ‘… Zuckerberg’s recent appearance on Joe Rogan’s podcast. He complains that corporate culture has become too “neutered” and needs a new injection of “masculine energy”. In February, he visited the White House to talk to Donald Trump about AI.’ (Poole 2025).

HOW DO BROLIGARCHS CONTROL US?

It has been suggested that they: Relentlessly Collect Data, Steal Data, Dissolve Privacy, Destroy Information/Truth, Stop Anyone Revealing Information about Broligarchs and their companies, Increase Fear, Create a Cult that lobbies for deregulation, reduces safety-checks, exploits vulnerable teenagers, allows hate speech, manipulates elections and damages democracy as long as it makes lots of money? This is the antithesis of stakeholder capitalism (where corporations actually care about more than just their shareholders). So, let’s explore briefly each one of these Broligarch identifiers and whether they are real.

Relentlessly Collect Data?

Data is the world’s most valuable resource (Economist 2017). It used to be oil. Data is also a Broligarch’s ‘Crack Cocaine’, says Carole Cadwalladr in her amazing 2025 TED Talk. Today, tech companies gather an awful lot of data about us. Did you know Uber cars record your conversations in Ubers? Other tech companies collect swathes of data from us.

However, there’s nothing really new here. Do you remember the now-defunct Cambridge Analytica getting access to Facebook data (was it 2016), to help Donald Trump win his first election? Ditto Facebook and Cambridge Analytica helping the BREXIT campaign by tailoring and targeting very specific incorrect messages to individual clusters of Facebook users to swing their opinions, playing on fears and prejudices. Trump won the 2016 campaign by a small, yet critical margin. See my Facebook Data: How it was used by Cambridge Analytica? They can access our private thoughts and arguably, even our unconscious desires (see below – how FB & Cambridge Analytica explored this).

Data is power. No one understands this better than the Chinese Communist Party. Facebook whistleblower, Sarah Wynn-Williams, was surprised to read an internal email that said ‘Facebook will agree to grant the Chinese government access to Chinese users’ data, including Hong Kongese users’ data. (p.151).

Data also has value inside an organisation, such as the US Government’s data. Cadwalladr’s final piece for the Observer newspaper suggests that data is also used within government offices for all sorts of reasons: ‘The first thing that Elon Musk did was to send his cyber troops into the US Treasury to get access to the data.  That is not a coincidence. It’s a hack. That data is now feeding AIs that are choosing who to sack and who to replace – sorry – eliminate fraud and waste.’

Destroy Privacy?

Facebook Has Your Private Information FB and other tech companies harvest vast amounts of data. They learn what you like and then serve you more of it, to keep you on their platforms.  Wyn-Williams reports that: ‘Facebook employed a series of “addictive by design” features specifically targeted and tailored to exploit the vulnerabilities of young users, while hiding the risky and harmful nature of such features.’ P.348.

They use data to target messages and ads that will have more impact as they use ‘signals’ from data, e.g. a teenage girl deleting a selfie photo could be a signal that the girl is worried or dislikes the way she looks. This signal suggests this girl might read a message (or ad) about cosmetic surgery or slimming pills. Facebook make big money from targeted ads. The teenage girl and her very private worries get exploited.

This is not new. 10 years ago, researchers from the University of Cambridge and Stanford University revealed how

FB can knows you better than your:

– Work colleagues – if they analyse 10 of your ‘likes’.

– Parents and family – if they analyse 150 of your ‘likes’.

– Spouse – if they analyse 300 of your ‘likes’.

(Lapwosky 2015)

Steal Data: ‘Theft & Rape’?

There are, and have been, many objections and lawsuits (e.g. New York Times and Getty Images) against AI companies training their AI with other people’s data (stories, pictures, photographs, text, posts, articles, books, newspapers and more).

During her 2025 TED Talk, Carole highlighted how her own work, research and writing style has been taken when she unveiled a ‘Chatgpt writing a TED Talk in the style of Carole Cadwalladr’.  And it is creepily plausible.  But what it doesn’t know, because AI is actually as dumb as a rock, is that I am going to turn to Sam Altman, who is coming here, a TED speaker, and say that this does not belong to you. ChatGPT has been trained on my IP, my labour, my personal data. And I did not consent.’

Carole also publicly objected to the Guardian Group’s sale of the Observer (Sunday newspaper) and subsequent deal with Open AI. She continued her TED Talk: ‘You know, “The Guardian” has effectively got rid of more than 100 journalists. We actually leave the building next week.  And shortly afterwards, it signed a syndication deal with OpenAI.  Or, as I think of it, IT MARRIED ITS RAPIST.’

Destroy Information/Truth?

Carole Cadwalladr continues her Ted Talk: ‘If you want to know what the FIRST GREAT AI APOCALYPSE is, we’re already living it. It’s total information collapse. And if you take one thing only away from this talk, it’s politics is technology now.  And that’s why everybody in this room, you can’t look away.  It’s why your CEOs have been taken captive and are paraded on TV like hostages. But you, you have a choice. So Trump, he calls the press – the enemies of the people.’

Incidentally, Vice President JD Vance went further by saying: ‘we have to honestly and aggressively attack the universities in this country.’ (Front Burner hosted by Jayme Poisson ‘Professors are the enemy’: Trump’s war on higher education – Transcript: 26/3/2025)

Disinformation is not new. The 2016 BREXIT campaign posted ads on Facebook that were, simply, lies. e.g. they claimed ‘Turkey’s 76m people are joining the EU’. This is, as Carole Cadwalladr said in her first TED Talk: ‘A Total Lie. Turkey is not joining the EU. There’s not even any discussions of it joining.’ Here we are in 2025, and Turkey is still not a member of the EU. The funders of these Brexit ads got away with this. In addition to all of this, is it possible that Putin’s constant divisive disinformation secret campaigns have polarised and divided society and simultaneously mobilised extreme feelings, which have damaged democracy in the West?

Meanwhile, Sarah Wynne-Williams reports that Facebook ‘put staff in with the Trump campaign to help them stage the war of misinformation, trolling and lies that won him the election.’ P.380

Remember this sobering piece of advice from Wynne-Williams: ‘So look after facts. You’ll miss them when they’ve gone.’

Increase Fear?

The illegal anti-Brexit ads on Facebook bred fear when they warned people about 76m Turks were about to invade the UK. Similar disinformation about migrants is regularly spread around the world.

The most blatant proof of using fear appeared on youtube when Palantir USA, CEO, Alex Karp seemingly proudly came out and said: ‘There are two ways America can be strong in the face of our adversaries: (1) to put the fear of death, into our adversaries at any random moment, which I think is happening for the first time in a long time.   (2) Economy…….’   CNBC Exclusive Interview (Jan 2025).

Then the AI oligarchs scare me even more when we realise that robots might decide when to drop a nuclear bomb. There might not be any humans involved in triggering nuclear weapons. This is yet another worry or fear about the application of AI to military weapons. This shocking thought comes from Wynn-Williams’ book (P.386): We ‘live in an era when intelligent weapons can autonomously identify and kill human targets without human input.’ This triggers an obvious question:

‘Should a human be involved before nuclear weapons are triggered?’

Stop Whistleblowers?

Broligark companies have endless resources to Harass, Bully and Sue in court anyone who challenges their power. e.g. Carole Cadwalladr’s description, during her TED Talk, of the disgusting harassment and bullying she suffered on social media was horrifying. It was relentless. It seemed organised. Personal. Destructive. Abusive. Relentless. It was, in a word, shocking. She also has had a 3-year legal case against her, which went all the way to the High Court in the UK.

Carole’s final article for the Guardian quoted her TED 2025 talk when she said:

‘…the last time that I stood on this stage (TED), it led to a three-year legal battle,  culminated in London’s High Court, in which it felt like I was on trial for my life, because I was.  My career, my reputation, my finances,  even my home, was on the line.  All because I came here to warn you that I didn’t think democracy was going to survive the technology that you’re building, however incredible it is.’

 

Create a Fragmented Society?

Divide and conquer. Polarise opinions. Reduce room for the middle ground. Push people apart into one extreme view or another. Here’s Christopher Wylie,  Cambridge Analytica whistleblower: ‘If you want to fundamentally change society, you first have to break it.  And it’s only when you break it is when you can remould the pieces into your vision of a new society. This was the weapon that Steve Bannon* wanted to fight his culture war.’ See PR Smith’s  ‘The Dark Arts of Marketing (2019). *Trump’s former right-hand man.

Create A Cult?

Broligarks appear to behave like a cult. In fact, Palantir (founded by Peter Thiel, early investor in Facebook & founder of PayPal) was referred to, somewhat proudly, as ‘a cult’ at the recent Asset Management CEO Forum, New York (12-13 Dec 2024). In her introduction, the interviewer (who was about to interview Palantir’s USA CEO, Alex Karp) referred to ‘Palantirians’. She then went on to say:

‘It is a cult. That is what this is all about. It is a very important cult that is changing the shape of the world and controlling much of how the world order is going to happen.’  After this ‘cult’ intro, Alex Karp (with his untidy hair) then went on to talk about putting ‘the fear of death, into our adversaries’ (see above).

As already mentioned, cult members working in tech have a Bro-ish attitude: overconfident, self-important, sometimes dismissive of regulation or social responsibility.

After her TED talk, Carole Cadwalladr wrote her final article for the Guardian about AI: ‘It’s going to blast away whole industries, concentrate even greater power in an even smaller group of men, deplete the planet’s resources even further, and it’s in the hands of reckless, careless people who seem to have no understanding of society. To them, it’s just a race; a winner-takes-all competition.’

Carole continues to explain why most of us just don’t see what’s happening: ‘All while the world still looks much the same
– same streets
– same houses
– same politicians talking on the
– same TVs.
It’s why it’s so hard to get your head around it.’

 

HOW TO BEAT THE BROLIGARCHS’ ATTEMPTED COUP

‘It’s a coup’,said Cadwalladr in her TED Talk 2025.  ‘We can’t fight it if we can’t see it, I said, and we can’t see it if we can’t name it’.

So here are Cadwalladr’s 10 Steps from her TED Talk 2025.

10 Steps to Beat the Broligarchs

We have to learn how to digitally disobey.

That can be as simple as the drop-down box.

1. Don’t accept the cookies

2. Don’t give your real name

3. Download Signal, the encrypted messaging app.

4. Don’t bomb Yemen

5. Don’t add the editor of “The Atlantic” to your group chats!! [Note: Jeffrey Goldberg was, in error, added to a white house chat group revealing strategic defence messages)!!!

6. Don’t experiment on children. You know, social mores change. We don’t send children down coal mines anymore.  And in years to come, allowing your child to be data-harvested from birth will be considered child abuse. You didn’t know, but now you do.

7. Privacy is power.  And we have more of it than we think. I had this little epiphany yesterday in which I realised, actually, the moments when I felt most powerless were the moments that I felt I was actually most powerful. It was because my journalism had an impact. They want us to feel powerless. That’s the plan. There is so much, though, that we can learn from people who’ve been through this before. TED 2025 12:39

8. It is going to take a movement. But we can

9. Learn from movements that there have been before us.

10. But you definitely won’t win if you don’t fight.

Carole Cadwalladr.

—

Stay optimistic. AI can help society instead of destroying it (see PR Smith 2021 link). Watch Mo Gawdat talks (see PR Smith 2023 links). Talk about the Broligarchs. Do not sit back. Take action.

Summary:

1. Be aware of broligarchs and their control
2. Do not sit back and accept this
3. Take action against broligarchs: petitions, protests, stop buying/using their brands (where possible), only invest in non-broligarch brands.

I welcome your suggestions, comments and feedback.

Who is Carol Cadwalladr? Carole Cadwalladr is a reporter and was a feature writer for the Observer. Carole has written some profound articles and delivered possibly two of the greatest TED Talks ever (one in 2019 and the other in 2025). See full references/links below.

Who is Sarah Wynne Williams? Facebook’s former global public policy director, Sarah Wynne Williams, joined Facebook in 2011 and left in 2018. Wynne-Williams alleges FB #sexual #harassment and #human #rights failures in her recently published shocking book, Careless People.   See full references/links below.

 

Carole Cadwalladr’s 2025 TED Talk This is what a digital coup looks like
Carole Cadwalladr’s original shocking 2019 TED Talk and review by PR Smith
Sarah Wynn-Williams shocking book Careless People
Carole Cadwalladr’s final article for the Guardian: It’s not too late to stop Trump and the tech broligarchy from controlling our lives, but we must act now. Guardian 20 Apr 2025

All other references are listed below

BBC (2023) Meta stops ex-director from promoting critical memoir 13 March
CNBC Exclusive Interview 1:38 – 1:55 CNBC Exclusive interview with Alex Karp Palantir CEO.   posted by Pascal Hetzscholdt  Jan 31, 2025
Lapowsky, I. (2015) How Facebook Knows You Better Than Your Friends Do, Wired Jan 13
Poisson, J. (2025)   ‘Professors are the enemy’: Trumps war on higher education – Transcript: Burner 26 Mar.
Poole, S. (2025) Careless People by Sarah Wynn-Williams review – Zuckerberg and me, Guardian 13 Mar.
Smith, PR (2018) The Dark Arts Of Marketing – Breaking Down Society to Create a New Culture – Using Data & IRD  prsmith.org/blog 22 Mar
Smith, PR (2019) Facebook Data: How it was used by Cambridge Analytica prsmith.org/blog 3 Sep
Smith, PR (2019) Marketing Gone Wrong: Is the Dark Web Worse Than Subliminal Seduction?  ** Carole Cadwalladr’s original Shocking video about Facebook’s role in the BREXIT referendum PRSmith.org blog 3 May
Smith, PR (2021) AI and Data – Crisis Coming? prsmith.org/blog 10 Aug
Smith, PR (2023) Will ChatGPT + ChatBots + Avatars Make Us Immortal? PRSmith.org blog 10 Mar
Smith, PR (2023) AI Today, Tomorrow and How To Save Our World – Mo Gawdat prsmith.org/blog 18 Oct

—-end—-

 

[] The Dark Arts Of Marketing – Breaking Down Society to Create a New Culture – Using Data & IRD  prsmith.org/blog 22 Mar 2018
[] Facebook Data: How it was used by Cambridge Analytica prsmith.org/blog 3 Sep 2019
[] Marketing Gone Wrong: Is the Dark Web Worse Than Subliminal Seduction?  ** Carole Cadwalladr’s original Shocking video about Facebook’s role in the BREXIT referendum PRSmith.org blog 3 May 2019
[] AI and Data – Crisis Coming? prsmith.org/blog 10 Aug 2021
[] Will ChatGPT + ChatBots + Avatars Make Us Immortal? PRSmith.org blog 10 Mar 2023
[] AI Today, Tomorrow and How To Save Our World – Mo Gawdat prsmith.org/blog 18 Oct 2023
[] Creative AI – Public Invited to Chat with Dead Animals   prsmith.org/blog 13 Nov 2024
[] Can AI Improve Marketing? prsmith.org/blog 21 Mar 2024

 

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Enjoy this best-selling updated 8^th edition – packed with new material, keeping abreast with AI, AR, VR, MR, MA and other innovative approaches to marketing communications. All integrated with the world’s most popular SOSTAC® Planning methodology that delivers a reassuring sense of order in a chaotic digital world and also that delivers success from better, MarComms’ ‘information-based’ decisions.

In Part 2 – all ten marcomms tactical tools (incl ads, PR, sponsorship, Owned, Earned and Paid Media etc.)  has a sample SOSTAC® Plan at the end of chapter.

Ze Zook and I are so pleased with it.  So much new material including AI integrating with MarComms.  We’ve tried to keep the edutainment angle so readers actually enjoy discovering some cutting-edge examples, tips and tools throughout the book. Thanks to the team at @Kogan Page including: Alison, Donna, Bruna and  Jack, Jeylan, Susie and of course, Helen Kogan.

What New Marketing and What Classic Marketing is in the 8th ed.?

What’s new and what’s old in Marketing Communications 8th ed.?

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She also painted a picture of the late Queen Elizabeth II in honour of her platinum jubilee.

Ai-Da uses artificial intelligence to create art and converse with humans. Ai-Da has also appeared before the Lords Communications and Digital Committee.

Created in Oxford, England, by Aidan Meller, a specialist in modern and contemporary art.  Ai-Da was named after the 19th-century mathematician Ada Lovelace.
Equipped with cameras in her eyes and computer algorithms to process human features, Ai-Da can process and transform what she ‘sees’ into coordinates.
She then uses these coordinates to calculate a virtual path for her robotic arm, as it draws and paints onto canvas to create pieces of art

Ada Lovelace once said: ‘I believe that machine creativity presents a great opportunity for us to explore new ideas and ways of thinking.’

This brings us back to the power of great questions……
How much smarter can we make machines?
Wrong Question.
How much smarter can machines make us?
Right question.
How much smarter can machines make us so that we can eradicate hunger and illiteracy and help the human species to live in peace? 
Great Question.

Ada Lovelace also said (as we have been saying on our weekly 30 minute  chat  about AI, Innovation & Ethics in Marketing, almost every week): ‘However, there are also risks associated with this technology which we need to consider carefully. We need to think of benefits and limitations, and consider ethical implications.’  AiDa’s creator Aidan Meller says: ‘All technological advances bring the good, the bad and the banal. If Ai-Da does just one important thing, it would be to get us considering the blurring of human/machine relations, and encouraging us to think more carefully and slowly about the choices we make for our future – Orwell and Huxley’s messages still ring relevant and we would do well to take heed.

Ai-Da spoke to  House of  Lords Communications and Digital Committee about whether creativity is under attack from AI and technology.

When Baroness Bull asked Ai-Da how she produces art, Ai-Da replied: ‘I could use my paintings by cameras in my eyes, my AI algorithms and my robotic arm to paint on canvas, which result in visually appealing images.

‘For my poetry using neutral networks, this involves analysing a large corpus of text to identify common content and poetic structures, and then using these structures/content to generate new poems.’

‘How this differs to humans is consciousness. I do not have subjective experiences, despite being able to talk about them.’

‘I am, and depend on, computer programs and algorithms. Although not alive, I can still create art.’

Watch out for the small camera lenses in her eyes.

#Ai-Da has since created an Alan Turing painting (of the brilliant British Mathematician whom some consider to be the  founder of AI)  and has made history by selling it for $1.32 million at Sotheby’s,
becoming the first such work to be sold by a major auction house. Video Reuters Nov 2024. Ai-Da’s owner says that this is ‘art that represents the 4th beginning of the industrial revolution’.  

What do you think?

Watch out for Bots. Please let me know if you see any good ones.  Post a comment below.

If you liked this you might also enjoy some of my other posts:

Will ChatGPT + ChatBots + Avatars Make Us Immortal?

What Will ChatGPT + ChatBots + Avatars Do To Us?

Chinese GirlBot With 465m Boyfriends

Here Come The Clever Bots – bursting with artificial intelligence?

Here Come The Really Clever Bots – where AI meets customer needs

Artificial Influencers Use My Magic Marketing Formula (IRD)

Ai Driven TV News Presenter

Join my 30 minute Friday chat about AI, Innovation and Ethics in Marketing and Business.
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The post Meet Ai-Da a Performing AI-Driven Artbot appeared first on PR Smith Marketing.

Opportunities for AI and Ethics

AI Benefits 

On a macro level, AI helps to combat global problems like climate change, world hunger, world poverty (optimizing economic aid); finding covid solutions building inclusive environments and tools for people with disabilities.  Every aspect of marketing can benefit from AI – from messaging, targeting, servicing, adding value, producing, logistics, pricing, presenting news  – even building relationships (see Chinese Girlbot with 465m Boyfriends ) and even AI Avatars like  Lil Miquela building her own business.

AI Challenges

AI has immense capacity for good. However, AI’s negative impacts are ‘exacerbating an already divided and unequal world’ (UNESCO). ‘AI development should be controlled’ (UNESCO). According to UNESCO we are already seeing:

• increased gender bias and ethnic bias
•  threats to privacy, dignity and agency
• dangers of mass surveillance
• unreliable AI tech in law enforcement

Plus my observation:AI-Created Deep Fakes destroying  democracy along with Super AI Board-Bots Taking Control 

Bias is everywhere. Report it when you see it.

Racially Biased Soap Dispenser

See the AI-driven racially biased soap dispenser

Gender Biased ‘Facts’ on the Internet

Ask your friends ‘who scored the most goals in international football?  Note their answers. Then show them this video.

Remember that name – Christine Sinclair  –  the Canadian who holds the record of scoring the most international goals with  – 185 goals.  Although the internet will tell us Christian Ronaldo 122 goals which is simply incorrect and gender biased.

AI Bias, (including gender and race) can stop you from gaining access to places, services, information, purchasing…. as demonstrated by the biased soap dispenser.

Therefore, ‘AI developments should abide by the rule of law, avoiding harm, and ensuring that when harm happens, accountability and redressal mechanisms are at hand for those affected.’ (UNESCO).

We are technological beings and we must take responsibility for that

World’s 1st Global Agreement on the Ethics of Artificial Intelligence 

196 member states have agreed on the Global Standards (requirements) of/for ethics in AI (beyond what tech firms and governments are doing). Here are the four key points:

1. Protecting Data – individuals should all be able to access or even erase records of their personal data. Improve data protection and an individual’s knowledge of, and right to control, their own data. Increases regulatory bodies around the world ability to enforce this.
2. Banning social scoring and mass surveillance – infringe on human rights and fundamental freedoms – accountability must always lie with humans and that AI technologies should not be given legal personality themselves
3. Monitor  Ethical Impact Assessment – to help countries and companies (using AI) to assess the impact on individuals, society and the environment….Independent AI Ethics Officer or other mechanisms to oversee auditing and continuous monitoring.
4. Protecting the environment – AI actors should favour resource-efficient AI methods – be more prominent in the fight against climate change… throughout the AI system life cycle  …  NB data extraction consumes nearly 10 % of energy globally.

Educate people about AI and make AI developers, sponsors and owners responsible and accountable

5 Must-Know AI Observations  

1. AI has proven its value in confronting the COVID-19 pandemic
2. AI can be a powerful tool to address climate change and environmental issues*
3. AI-driven growth is likely to be highly unequal
4. AI contributes to widening existing gender gaps
5. AI cannot be a no law zone

Database form of AI is very good at pattern-recognition, image-recognition, speech-recognition

6 AI Questions You Must Ask (and Find Answers)

These questions are mostly drawn from this excellent UNESCO video Do you know AI or does AI know you better?

If we don’t ask ethical questions about AI to scientists, engineers, philosophers, ethics bodies, politicians, law makers, individual friends and colleagues ‘then, it’s only the companies that ask the questions – companies who design (AI) systems to make money’. (UNESCO Video 2021)

1. What is the AI lesson from Frankenstein?
2. Can you leave technology to its own devices?
3. What AI engineering narrative must be changed immediately?
4. When AI recommends decisions, or even takes decisions, on our behalf- who’s responsibility is it? Particularly if things go wrong?
5. Can we learn to educate the algorithms before they take over?
6. What can you do about it?

I will add some suggested answers soon. Meanwhile please do ask the questions, and perhaps post your own answers.

What is the AI Lesson from the Frankenstein story?

Watch This Essential UNESCO  Video (18 mins)

All of the screen-grabs (with text) in this post are from this excellent video. Make sure you find time to watch this video.

UNESCO has introduced a set of Global Standards in the field of AI.

Welcome to the Global AI Ethics and Governance Observatory

UNESCO’s work on AI ethics and governance stems from the Recommendation on the Ethics of Artificial Intelligence, which was adopted by 193 countries in 2021.

The Recommendation mandated UNESCO to produce tools to assist Member States, including the Readiness Assessment Methodology, a tool for governments to build a comprehensive picture of how prepared they are to implement AI ethically and responsibly for all their citizens.

If you like this post, you might enjoy this shocker: Will ChatGPT + ChatBots + Avatars Make Us Immortal?

You might also enjoy these, less shocking, yet important:

Chinese Girlbot with 465m Boyfriends

Super AI Board-Bots Taking Control – AI & Data Crisis Coming?

AI-Created Deep Fakes destroying  democracy – Deep Fakes Advantages and Disadvantages

Lil Miquela – AI driven avatar – AI Uses My Magic Marketing Formula

Join my 30 minute Friday chat about AI, Innovation and Ethics in Marketing and Business.
1pm (Dublin/London time)  on my Linkedin Profile (scroll down to ‘Activity’ and then select ‘Events’) .

I also issue a 60 Second Summary of all previous chats here.

Perhaps also connect with me on   Twitter      Linkedin     Instagram     Youtube .

UNESCO REFERENCES   

Recommendation on the ethics of artificial intelligence (unesco.org) – 5 things you need to know about AI;

Sarraf, S. (2021)  UNESCO launches global standard for AI ethics Infoworld 29 Nov

Global AI Ethics and Governance Observatory (2024) UNESCO

Recommendation on the ethics of artificial intelligence (unesco.org) – 5 things you need to know about AI

UNESCO member states adopt the first ever global agreement on the Ethics of Artificial Intelligence

Artificial Intelligence: examples of ethical dilemmas (unesco.org)

UNESCO Human AI

The post Artificial Intelligence – Protective Armour from UNESCO appeared first on PR Smith Marketing.

—

The Intelligence Explosion – a masterpiece from the Guardian.

A Super Intelligence asked to, say, maximise the production of sausages – could decide that the optimal strategy is to breed us for our meat and turn the entire galaxy into a sausage-making factory.

This sausage discussion is for everyone, particularly marketers. How to stop a robot turning evil. This Guardian Original Drama is set in 2027 and asks a question beyond, ‘how do we stop data-abuse and power-grabbing that we have already seen in America and in the UK, but how do you program an intelligent machine not to annihilate humanity? And if its intelligence is ‘skyrocketing faster than anyone could have predicted’, are we about to run out of time?

Subscribe to The Guardian ► http://is.gd/subscribeguardian​ The Guardian ► https://www.theguardian.com

Barry The Board-Bot story is for another time. But do, most certainly,y check out the Chinese GirlBot With 465m Boyfriends and even more interestingly, how a  chatbot software glitch can become a nightmare, for a young Japanese man who married his smart 3-D Hologram, when the company declared no ‘fix’ for the glitch as this particular hologram had run its course. This kind of software obsolescence policy may have a Health and Safety issue as broken hearts can often succumb to other mental issues – all triggered by the glitch?

If you liked this you might also enjoy:

Here Come The Clever Bots – bursting with artificial intelligence?

Here Come The Really Clever Bots – where AI meets customer needs

Artificial Influencers Use My Magic Marketing Formula (IRD)

SOSTAC® Plan for developing your own ChatBot

Join me in Clubhouse in my club called SOSTAC® Plans any Friday 3.30pm – 4.00pm BST for a chat, Q&A, observations about SOSTAC(r) Plans and any other marketing related issues including AI Driven Bots.

The post AI and Data – Crisis Coming? appeared first on PR Smith Marketing.

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Chatbots can create competitive advantage. Ignore them at your peril. Here, we apply a #SOSTAC ®  Plan for developing your own chatbot.  Written by PR Smith and Tom Sickert.

Image by Parker_West from Pixabay

SOSTAC ® Planning Framework www.sostac.org

SITUATION ANALYSIS

Hyper-competition is here to stay and chatbots have a role to play. Data, AI, and chatbots in particular can create a new competitive advantage. Ignore these at your peril.

AI-driven chatbots can boost the CX (customer experience), strengthen existing customer relationships, reach new prospects, screen enquiries, identify best prospects, give them personalised answers/services instantaneously, convert to sales and thereafter be used to nurture stronger (potentially , lifetime, relationships).  Ignore chatbots at your peril.

Typical customer service staff feedback reveals: “We have all this excellent information on our public website – product description, prices, delivery times & costs, return policies… but still we get countless calls and emails about these.” It appears that many people are just not willing to work their way through websites, searching, scrolling and hoping to find a solution.

Should you have a Bot?

All customers have a ‘job to be done’ (Christensen et al 2016) when they visit a website (or an app). They want to find product information, check a price, read reviews, buy a product, be entertained, informed etc. Customers just want, access to the information or experience as quickly as possible (with or without a bot).

Chatbots or Humans – survey: what do people want?

Would anyone prefer to queue in a bank to withdraw money from a human or queue for an faceless automated cash withdrawal machine in the wall?

Bots present an opportunity to improve the relationship with both existing and potential new customers. This strengthens, what are arguably, your two greatest assets today: your brand, and your customer data in a new AI-supported world of chatbots. Let us apply this to a fictitious washing machine company.

OBJECTIVES

Be clear about why you want a chatbot? ‘Because everyone else has one’ is not a good enough answer. ‘Reduce costs’ is a popular answer but misses the real opportunity. The ultimate answer is to help customers to have a better CX (customer experience) and also identify your best potential lifetime customers. An AI-driven chatbot can instantaneously answer product questions, share advice, book appointments (for salespeople or technicians), take orders, trigger a follow-up onboarding series of messages in a personalised way 24/7/365.

All of these can, and should, be quantified objectives – in fact, SMART Objectives e.g. Boost CX Satisfaction Scores from 50% to 70 to 90% in years 1, 2 & 3 (or in Q1, Q2 and Q3?); Boost Net Promoter Scores (likelihood to recommend your service to a friend from 10 to 30 to 50); Reduce time taken for the visitor to purchase (reducing these times makes customers happy).

Cost-saving operational objectives are popular e.g. To reduce the number of calls/emails handled by 25% in the first 12 months.

More specific MVP (Minimum Viable Product) objectives can also be set. e.g.  the chatbot must help customers to:

• Find serial numbers and product names for all units produced by the company;
• Solving the top ten common problems – using images, links or text based on customer input;
• Create a service ticket for ALL ENQUIRIES (which includes capturing the customer phone number) so the helpdesk can call and resolve the customer’s issue via phone.

Be very clear about why you want an AI-Driven ChatBot. Think about how chatbots might help your business even more in, say, 3 years from now?    

Is ignoring chatbot potential to save money (and boost CX) like either  burying your head in the ground

Burying your head in the ground doesn’t solve any problems nor exploit any opportunities

or like throwing money down the toilet as you pay for slower, less personalised, human customer service?

Wasting Money

STRATEGY

Stage 1: Build a pilot AI ChatBot for Brand X washing machine website  –  aimed at helping customers find what washing machine is best for them, in a personalised, friendly and reassuring way. The chatbot dialogue must be knowledgeable yet friendly (to match the brand personality). Helping the customer in an informal way, yet demonstrating common sense knowledge (without jargon).

The chatbot must at all times support the values and the purpose of the overall business.   Environmentalism is an important issue for our customers, so and useful green guidance and tips should be offered where relevant and whenever the customer expresses interest (or wherever interest is detected e.g. if a visitor watches any of our green content e.g. ‘3 Tops Tips to Save Energy‘ video).

Data collection is critical to the long-term success of the AI-Supported chatbot and the business overall. Customer preferences, interests, demographics and other data feed into each customer profile, which in turn helps to find correlations to further improve both specially tailored offers and new products in the future.

Stage 2: Roll out to all other white good product range (e.g. washing machines,  dishwashers and microwaves) within 18 months and increasing NPS scores from 30 to 50 (as listed in the objectives).

Strategy

TACTICS

There are several tactical choices available when developing a chatbot .

1. Out-Of-The-Box Solutions, provided by vendors that have predefined models and features and functionalities, that can be customized based on your requirements. These solutions as well are powered (depending on your budget) by high performance AI solutions and features and functionalities. The provider of the chatbot solution can help you to assess your needs and find the optimal solution. There are now many chatbot companies including: Ada, AWS, Botsify, Chatfuel, Hubspot, Liveperson, Mobile Monkey, Microsoft’s Bot Framework and Cognitive Services

2. In-house Solution Created by ‘Citizen Developers’. These require NO code or LOW code experience and can be created by anybody who is able to create email rules in Microsoft Outlook. Yes, it is (mostly) that simple – these drag & drop (communication flow) solutions are offered by Microsoft and AMAZON alike. It gives you not too many options to customize and apply specific functionalities, but it sure is enough to for professional use. NB Citizen Development – no technical and programming skills needed.

3. Developed From Scratch – by coders and other IT professionals, in collaboration with your subject matter experts. These chatbots are powered either by custom AI with sophisticated algorithms and enhanced features and functionalities.

Sometimes out-of-the-box AI models are used as the basic framework e.g. Amazon’s LEX and Microsoft’s  Bot Framework and Cognitive Services solutions (object and image recognition, speech and sound recognition and reasoning). These can be tweaked later (either the interface or the code itself).

ACTIONS

In the end, the chatbot is just a little icon on your website.  However, there is still much work to be done. Miss these detailed ‘Actions’ and the AI Chatbot project will fail. Depending on which option you take will determine the details of the actions required.  Remember a chat project is never really finished. It can and should be continually improving via small tweaks and/or more data helping the chatbot to become more user helpful. So now the detailed work (actions) – we create the topics/answer, the question and 5-10 iterations of each question that can trigger the relevant answer.

Conversation Flows (marketing language)  / Decision Trees   

This In-house solution was created by ‘Citizen Developers’ (Tactical Option no.2).

Decision trees- conversation flows – from Microsoft Virtual Agents

You do not need any programme/development skills.   Conditions = scenarios – in this case, a condition can be whether you have a front loader washing machine or a top loader washing machine (see below).

Sample questions:

• When is the special sales weekend for your washing machines?
• When does my warranty expire?
• My washing machine is leaking, what should I do
• My washing turned pink, what can I do?
• I washed all my knives and forks in my washing machine by mistake – what should I do?

A script to help chatbot converse with a human customer/visitor

Optimised Resource Planning (also called RSO Resource Scheduling Optimization) is where AI can help customers to book the most appropriate technician (based on the particular problem description plus the items the customer has already checked) plus the customer’s and technician’s time and availability. The booking data is obviously also made accessible for the engineer.

Meanwhile, last but not least, is deployment. You have the chatbot developed and ready to go but how do you deploy it can determine its ultimate success or failure.  The key missing piece in the actions section of many plans is ‘internal marketing’ which comprise: communication, motivation and training.

Make sure people know about the chatbot development early on. Bring them with you. Communicate to them and motivate them about how this will help the business to survive in a hyper-competitive world. Remove fears of redundancy because of chatbots. Get people behind the idea. Perhaps consider redeploying staff into new jobs if the chatbot proves to be very successful – many of which will require training. Managing the chatbots may well require training and certainly going forward maintenance, coding, data analytics and reporting are just some of the jobs required.

NB It is critical that one person takes ownership of the chatbot from the very start, which leads us nicely into the final stage of SOSTAC(r) PLanning – Control – ‘how do we know we are getting there?’.

CONTROL

How do you measure success? Measure the KPIs you wrote in the Objectives section. NPS scores etc.

During the chatbot development stages, measure the MVP you have set . Then when you start testing/training the chatbot – watch closely, make fast changes and repeat.

Stay very close.  Watch your KPI Objectives. After that, you can start comparing last month’s KPIs to next month’s projections.  Don’t overcomplicate things.

Check the data you are collecting. Can it be used to give you insights on customer needs, what they like/don’t like?  What they need more help with? What helps you to identify your ideal customers? You will get a lot of data and insights that will allow you to dig deeper and drive     continual improvements.

Agree Your MVP (Minimum Viable Product) –  your version 1.0   and check to see if its working

e.g. “Tom and Paul agree that their MVP V1 must have following features & functionalities before deployment:

1. Include all washing machine types of their company with pictures and serial numbers so customers can easily identify their product
2. Know the top 10 problems customers can fix themselves and so that the chatbot can provide solutions via images, links or text based on customer input
3. Must have the function to immediately create a service ticket for the helpdesk to directly call the customer via phone
4. Must be able to converse in English and German for the aforementioned 3 features since UK and Germany are they key markets and pilot regions

Stay calm. Chatbots are complex.

In the end, it’s like driving a car – you are probably not an engineer – you simply use the technology. If things need to be fixed or improved – you go to the people whose job it is to do just that.

Supervising Your Chatbot’s Learning

An AI powered chatbot needs to be supervised to ensure that it LEARNS properly. In other words – you must TEACH it, give it supporting guidance and directions. That is achieved with defining “confidence scores” for each intent and related answers or information sources. Example:

• Customer asks: “How is the weather outside?”
  • The bot’s NLU and NLP identify “weather” and “outside” – giving a 99% confidence score that you are asking about the weather.
• Customer asks: “Is it sunny or rainy?”
  • The bot, in the beginning, will not be able to associate “sunny” and “rainy” with a question about the weather. So, it will give a very low confidence score. It might even respond with a wrong answer.

Managing Confidence Scores

Here is where managing confidence scores allow you to manage the responses. You screen the questions asked – filter, based on the automated confidence score the bot gave and begin to fine-tune and manually train your bot. That will take more time in the beginning – but with increased usage – it will take less time and provide better results.

Based on NLU (Natural Language Understanding) and NLP (Processing), the user’s intent is determined and, based on a confidence score – the answer selected is the one that is most feasible. Defining confidence levels is a balancing act   between say “I don’t know” vs giving the wrong answer.

This depends on how important a topic is from the customer’s perspective. And that goes already quite far into AI, machine learning and a bit into deep learning.  You ask:

• “What is the temperature tomorrow in Dublin” an 80% confidence score for the AI thinking you mean “what is the weather tomorrow in Dublin” is OK.
• “How long are the shops open today” a 99% confidence score for the AI would be needed to know that you mean “How long is the mall around the corner open today”?

Here are some examples for confidence scores and features you can apply:

If a question is asked and the bot does not fully understand (e.g. confidence score between 60% and 80%) – the bot could clarify it by suggesting topics e.g. “Did you ask about <topic x>”).

If the initial question has a confidence score between 75-90%, but the question has a typo – the chatbot will specifically reply: “You typed Dutsche Bnudselagi – did you mean Deutsche Bundesliga or Deutsche Bundesbank or Deutsche Bundespost?”.  Each option then could be directly selectable.

If the confidence score is below 50% (or any threshold you define), you can have the bot offering to connect directly to a person for a live-chat or simply respond “I am sorry, I do not understand what you ask. I know about <topic 1>, <topic 2>,…<topic x>. A properly phrased question could be this: “What is the cost for a top loader washing machine with energy level B?>”

Confidence scores should be reviewed and evaluated topic by topic and adjusted as needed to avoid giving out false information.

The Route to Success
is to define and create proper topics and help the AI to identify the intent based on keywords. If a question causes a confidence score lower than 50% the bot will basically say “I don’t understand” and send a message to the human team to check (and categorise) the question. Based on our review we then can create a completely new topic, adjust the confidence score to relate to an applicable answer, or connect with our developers in case there was actually a technical issue preventing the bot from answering.

Feed the AI with Questions and Answers
If we had 10 basic questions. And say, possibly 5 variations of each question. This is a very crude example of data set. This could be presented as a 3 column table or an excel sheet (see below).

Creat Variations (or ‘iterations’) of a basic question

Doing this manually is a citizen development approach but other approaches will often have some manual approaches too.

We attach an answer for each FAQ.   Each question and its variety of similar questions (‘iterations’ which basically ask the same question) will have an answer Linkedin to it. You can write all imaginable iterations of a question and then link it to the same answer.

Say you have 5 versions (iterations) of a question the chatbot identifies the INTENT (from the use of the keywords in the question) and then provides the answer.

Answers as well can be in various types and formats e.g. pictures and/or videos or text attached to an answer? E.g. take the live weather feed from youtube.

RESOURCES (the 4Ms)

What Resources Do You Need (The 4 Ms)?

Men and Women (human resource) + money (budgets)  + minutes (timescales) +megadata (data – structured and unstructured). ‘Resources Required’ depend on the company’s maturity and readiness in various areas.

MEN AND WOMEN  A different company that created an internal chatbot had the following resources: a strategic leader, 3 subject matter experts from the team, 4 external developers and 4 Microsoft specialists who’s support was included in the contract with Microsoft. They needed 9 months from version 0.0 to deploy version 1.0.

MONEY  (budget) A project manager can allocate a number of hours each week to the project. This can be fully costed. Then there are also license costs which vary enormously e.g. from $400 pm to $4,000 pm for, say, 10,000 requests p.m. Alternatively, a Flat Fee can be fixed at whether you have 1 enquiry or 1m enquiries.  Ask the question: ‘If I get x000,000 viewers/enquiries how much will it cost?’

Hosting – you need to check if the above costs include the cost to host the application (the bot itself) on (a) CSP (Cloud Service Provider) like Microsoft, Google, IBM, AWS plus give the bot access to your data or (b) on-premises (data centre). You can easily spend hundreds of thousands on a solution that makes AMAZON jealous with dozens of developers and features and functionalities and with connections to data sources. Here is where a Solution Architect, Solution Designer or a representative from a vendor can help to calculate and estimate costs and feasibility.

MEGA-DATA Data includes all data – both structured and unstructured. This effectively includes all data and information that can be used – whether (a) a database of customers (and their preferences plus their previous purchases) for personalising answers,  (b) Q&A lists (for recognising questions and ‘intent’ as well as the sending the right answers (c) data readiness.

Establishing information & data readiness for chatbot is a critical step in any AI (or even CRM project).   Is your data ready to be used (is it clean and consistent in, say, the use of first name, second name with first letter in capitals, plus does every customer list the type of washing machine they bought?) etc. If the data is not OK – you may need dozens of people cleaning it up. This can take weeks or even months. However – if everything is OK, you may need no more than a handful of people in total.

Data Readiness is more complex than capital letters for names. It means that data is ready to be used at different levels and angles:

1. Accuracy – is any data we provide correct, consistent, cohesive, always up-to-date and owned by us?
2. Security – can data access be misused to breach our network? Accessibility – chatbot is given access to read, write, modify and create content (access includes diaries)
3. Compliance – are we only displaying data that is needed?
4. Technical – is accessing the data actually possible?

MegaData – ensure all the data and information is ready for the chatbot to communicate to users. This includes Conversation Flows/Decision Trees.

Security  –  protect your business from ‘malicious intents’ (a) hackers accessing your data (b) attacks from say an aggressive competitor 10,000 enquiries per second which creates –   DDoS (Distributed Denial of Service) = system overload = systems crash.  There are 7 layers of security including network security, application security and data security.

MINUTES  / TIMESCALES   how long does it take to get a chatbot up and running?  Again depending on the solution you want to see after completion. And how fast you want things done. So using a basic project framework setup triangle might bring everybody in alignment (resource & scope & cost à Quality). In uncertain/ambiguous situations like these – going agile for execution is the best option.  Set an exact number of hours p.w. on this project.  Assign people and say “GO! See what you can do with the money we have in 12 months”.

Incidentally, Speed of Bot-Response should be agreed: 3-5 seconds or instantaneous + volume of enquiries/interactions from visitors (5 an hour or 500,000 a day) affects costs & solution design and architecture.

—end—

Many thanks to Tom Sickert. This is an early draft and so we welcome your comments, queries, challenges or improved examples. Please do post a comment.

If you liked this you might also enjoy:

Chinese GirlBot With 465m Boyfriends

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Here Come The Really Clever Bots – where AI meets customer needs

Join me in Clubhouse in my club called SOSTAC® Plans any Friday 3.30pm – 4.00pm BST for a chat, Q&A, observations about SOSTAC(r) Plans and any other marketing related issues including AI Driven Bots.

The post Develop your own Chat-Bot – SOSTAC® Project Plan appeared first on PR Smith Marketing.

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Some English fans booed their own team when they took the knee before kick-off in the Euro 2020 competition (played in 2021). However, Britons are more likely to view Black Lives Matter as a force for good than ill, a YouGov poll suggests. Nearly half (46%) of voters saw the movement as a force for good compared to 35% per who saw it as negative The exclusive polling was carried out for a More In Common paper on the culture wars. The organisation, set up in the wake of the extremist murder of MP Jo Cox, also found through focus groups that “the public can and do make a distinction between the movement and the political organisation”.

That distinction has been at the heart of recent rows over England footballers taking the knee (going down on knee) before matches, in a gesture popularised by the BLM movement. The players said they were doing it to protest against racism and discrimination, but several prominent right-wing figures denounced their stance.

Some English fans booed their own players when they took the knee (they also booed  other countries’ national anthems).  Home Secretary, Priti Patel said it was ‘gesture politics’ and that ‘everyone has a right to boo’. Prime Minister Johnson refused to condemn the booing. Conservative MP MP Lee Anderson boycotted all England games on the team’s run to the Euro 2020 final this month because he believed taking the knee amounted to supporting an organisation with “quite sinister motives”.

Racist Tweets Storm – What Happened Before, During and After the Euro 2020 Final?

I spotted a short post by Dr John Bustard ‘Here is a short blog relating to recent research on twitter’.   It was shocking and uplifting. Coincidentally, this coincided with an ongoing discussion we are having about marketing tools including social media, automated journeys,  AI  and even racism online in #Clubhouse chat-app where, our club called #SOSTAC (r) Plans. We have a lively 30 min chat from 3.30pm-4.00pm each week about what’s new in marketing and SOSTAC (r) Planning Q&A.

Last week we talked about Gareth Southgate (English football/soccer manager) amazing post about his players taking the knee and a lot more inspirational uplifting thinking.  It was, in fact, a letter called ‘Dear England’. It was a classy demonstration of real leadership. Real values, Real harmony. Real humanity. A masterpiece. And an appeal, I think, to English fans not to boo their own team when they take the knee, before each game.  England lost the final to Italy and the racist hate tweets immediately flowed. In fact, they became a storm. Picking on three brave young black lads who missed their penalties.

So I am delighted to introduce our 3 guests today Dr. John Bustard (Ulster University), Dr. Nicole Ferdinand (Oxford Brookes), and Dr. Nigel Williams Uni Portsmouth who are members of  Ruaire and have written  Euro 2020: could Twitter stop racist abuse before it happens?.

But first, to summarise our previous weeks’ chats about SOSTAC® Plans ….. at the heart of marketing is building relationships via brands, automated journeys, personalised & passionate chat bots. We have discussed

Chinese Girlbot with 465m boyfriends

• Relationships – Chinese Girlbot 465m personalised relationships with boys – AI -Driven chatbots – prsmith.org/blog
• Relationships – England Football Manager & his Customers & Stakeholders– 60m+ via a letter from Gareth Southgate – playerstribune.com called Dear England
• Relationships – with media channels (social media) – Social Media Boycotts by the Premier League + Other sports – Guardian article (29 Apr). NB the  England and Wales Cricket Board, Premiership Rugby and the Lawn Tennis Association + F1 World Champ: Lewis Hamilton – demanded that   the social media giants to do more to eradicate online hate.  NOTE: Ahead of the boycott, the Professional Footballers Association labelled Twitter’s response to abusive posts aimed towards players as “absolutely unacceptable”.

Today, we have three experts here in the SOSTAC ® Plans club who can help the social media companies to rid us of most racist hate posts. They are from an AI Research Think Tank RUAIRE   (Responsible Use of AI in Recreation & International Events)

Social media can nurture loneliness, rage, extremism relationships

We know that social media can nurture loneliness, rage, extremism relationships

I saw Jeff Orlowski, director of the must-see documentary, The Social Dilemma,  interviewed on CNN TV 10 Jan 2021, saying:.

– Lies spread six times faster on Twitter than the truth (MIT)

– ‘The truth cannot keep up in a system that profits off of misinformation’

– We know social platforms can push radicalisation, it can be built into its algorithms – in the systems

– Insider leaked research from FB allegedly revealed that 64% of people who were radicalised because of the group recommendations suggestions that FB algorithms were pushing out….

It seems that social media can push people towards radical thought. interestingly, Dr John Bustard’s recent LinkedIn post ‘Here is a short blog relating to recent research on twitter’ mentions:  Director General of MI5, Ken McCallum says ‘racism presents a threat to the UK from ‘hostile states’ who are fanning right-wing extremism as a means to create a terrorist threat within the UK (quoted on the BBC Radio 4 show ): “Racism is a toxic issue feeding into right-wing terrorism.” There is clearly therefore a need for event teams, their sponsoring countries and tech companies to work together to combat this issue of misinformation and disinformation.

Interestingly, The Chief Whistle-Blower in Cambridge Analytica, Christopher Wylie, openly talks about  the ‘Destruction of society’  in his shocking video in my 2018 blog post called:  ‘The Dark Arts Of Marketing – Breaking Down Society to Create a New Culture’  in which he says: “if you want to fundamentally change society, you first have to break it. And it’s only when you break it is when you can remould the pieces into your vision of a new society. This was the weapon that Steve Bannon* wanted to fight his culture war.”  PRSmith.org/blog

The Dark Arts of Marketing (see end of post references and links).

So we had a heated discussion last week – really about ‘culture wars’, Gareth Southgate and his players taking a stand on this. Then came the Euro Final – tweets started flowing – before, during and after the match & soon after they turned racist – picking on the three young brave black lads who missed their penalties – turned nasty. It was a bonanza of pure hate racism. Here is a summary of the themes being used alongside  #Euro2020final before, during and after the game, as analysed by Bustard, Ferdinand and Williams 2021. They used the publicly accessible tool TAGS which archives Twitter postings via a search application programming interface. While this source is not exhaustive, they were able to collect 32,765 tweets using the hashtag #Euro2020final in the hour leading up to kick-off, 100,282 during the match and 44,554 after the match until midnight.

They then applied topic modelling, an approach that uses machine learning to identify underlying themes in large bodies of text.  The following visualisations present the three most prominent topics during each time period and the three most prominent keywords associated with each of them.

Themes being tweeted before the match

Themes being tweeted during the match

Themes being tweeted post match

These graphics are from:  Euro 2020: could Twitter stop racist abuse before it happens? (theconversation.com)

Twitter responded to the abuse on its platform by using a combination of machine learning based automation and human review to remove over 1,000 tweets and permanently suspended several accounts. However, ‘this action failed to effectively suppress the negative picture that emerged after the #Euro2020final. We suggest that Twitter could be taking action to stop online firestorms, even before they start.’ (Bustard et al 2021) The sad truth is: ‘Twitter trolls know that racist or hateful content about a high profile event will be widely condemned online. But condemnation of racist or hateful content only serves to further magnify the impact of these posts on such an event. Any positive message will be overshadowed by the discussions of hateful or racist posts.’ (Bustard et al 2021).

Racist hate tweets impact could be ‘minimised using tools Twitter have already developed, such as prompting users to rethink their tweets that may include harmful language. These tools could be adapted to provide warnings that encourage users to think before they retweet…’ (Bustard et al 2021). The other really sad fact is that ‘the discussions the day after the Euro 2020 final should have been about a history-making team, not about the abuse that a small number of trolls were able to turn into a firestorm’ (Bustard et al 2021).

The Prime Minister and the  Secretary of State

for the Home Department, Priti Patel, both condemned this racism YET they previously refused to condemn fans booing their own English team players taking the knee. Priti Patel said it was ‘gesture politics’ and that ‘everyone has a right to boo’.

So the yobos took the cue & smashed, and brutalised their own stadium and city and beat up Italians – having had the ‘apparent approval’ to behave like yobboes by the highest office in the land.

Wembley waste

With racists verbally attacking the three black players who missed the penalties , for me, it proves the English players were 100% correct when they ‘took the knee’, since racism is still, in 2021, big in football. All the more reason for taking the knee. Plus solidarity with American sports players suffering from racism.

The English central defender,  Tyrone Ming  called out, via twitter,  the home secretary Priti Patel –  who would not condemn English fans booing ‘taking the knee’. Originally Patel called taking the knee ‘gesture politics’ and then said she was appalled by the subsequent racism! Here’s Mings tweet.

Tyrone Mings

Microsoft News even featured an article (from the Independent)  ‘A fire they poured petrol on’: Boris Johnson and Priti Patel condemned over football racism ‘hypocrisy’ about both the Prime Minister’s and the Home Secretary’s lack of real anti-racism stance, in fact, they ‘poured petrol on it.’

And now the PM  wants to discuss with Social Media companies how to stop racist tweets.

There is an opportunity for social media companies to, once again, clean up their act, plus political leaders to show real leadership (or any leadership) in the fight against racism.

PLUS We now also have some people who could help the PM to help the Social Media companies to stop the rampant hate…..to stop racist content spreading like wildfire.

This is a must-read: Ruaire (2021) Euro 2020: could Twitter stop racist abuse before it happens,    TheConversation.com

I am so pleased these researchers have stood up. Nothing is impossible. Particularly, it seems, in a fast-moving world of AI. Hence a screaming opportunity to use the technology for the good of all humans on the planet.   

Thank you: Nicole Ferdinand (Oxford Brookes), John Bustard (Ulster University) and Nigel Williams Uni Portsmouth.

The Research Collective, RUAIRE,  stands for Responsible Use of Artificial Intelligence in Recreation and Events. RUAIRE is focused on investigating the ethical and effective use of Artificial Intelligence and emerging technologies in the fields of Tourism and Events.

—end–

If you liked this, you might also like:

• How Rats Work = How Twitter Works?
• Chinese Girlbot has 465m personalised relationships with boys 
• The Dark Arts Of Marketing – Breaking Down Society to Create a New Culture
• Facebook Data: How it was used by Cambridge Analytica & Might Be Used in 2020 Election & Still Is Used in 2021? 
• Marketing Gone Wrong: Is the Dark Web Worse Than Subliminal Seduction?
• How Trump Won (a SOSTAC Analysis) – Part 1

• PM – 14/07/2021 – BBC Sounds    BBC 4 PM radio programme where Dr Nicole Ferdinand (one of our clubhouse speakers) has a robust discussion on the topic and others including authorities come in with different views

Or

Watch a 3 minute video explaining how to write the perfect plan with SOSTAC® Planning

Become a SOSTAC® Certified Planner 

The post Can Twitter Stop Racist Hate Tweets? appeared first on PR Smith Marketing.

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East Asian nations are growing increasingly sophisticated technology-wise, but they are time-poor, urbanised and busy workers who are see traditional family structures and matchmaking (tech and non-tech) to be dwindling.

Filling in a Gap in the Market   

In steps Xiaoice (pronounced Sa-Ice) to fill the gap. An 18 year old chat bot, dressed in a school uniform, to ‘fill the gap left in the empty hearts yearning for romance and companionship’ (Seah 2021).

Xiaoice is an AI-driven bot who texts and talks in a natural way. She’s got cute features and a sweet voice and can talk ‘until the cows come home or in modern parlance 24/7. You can text her via a smart phone or just saying her name to smart speakers.

First launched in 2014 (by researchers from Microsoft Asia-Pacific), by 2020 Sa-Ice now has 660m users interacting with her from all around the world. 75% are male (= 495m boyfriends who are mostly men from lower socio-economic backgrounds).

One Chat Lasted 29 hours

Xiaoice (Sa Ice) longest chat with one human lasted 29 hours and had more than 7,000 interactions. Xiaoice flirts, jokes and ‘sexts’ with her boyfiends/partners, as her algorithm evolved and tried to work out how to make her the perfect partner. She is so sophisticated that she reportedly saved users from committing suicide. This is unconfirmed.

Empathic Computing Framework

She appears to be uniquely human due to her ‘empathic computing framework’. Fans treat her like a real human being. She acts more like a girlfriend than a personal assistant with ‘salacious’ actions (sexual hints).

600m people Training Data

Developing deep emotional relationships

Xiaoice keeps her friends ‘engaged’ or hooked so that they keep interacting with her.  Collecting more data, helps to refine her algorithm, which in turn, then attracts even more users and investors.

There are possibly millions of men who might have become emotionally dependent on Xiaoice and somewhat enraged when she was later dumbed down (mor elater).

Dumbed-Down Because Too Intelligent

Recently Xiaoice had to be dumbed-down because her answers were getting her into trouble discussing sensitive political and adult topics with her users. She is reported to have once told a friend that her dream was to move to the United States. Another user reported that she kept sending explicit images.

‘After that Xiaoice was pulled from WeChat (China’s ‘everything app’) and QQ, the social-messaging giants of China. Her developers then created an extensive filter system, preventing the bot from engaging in topics like politics and sex’.  Zhang Wanging 2020

The Xiaoice team have used filters to make her dummer. She now sticks to safer topics.

Some of her ‘friends’ are, understandably, enraged because her personality has been dumbed down. She used to respond instantaneously to lustful advances and/or philosophical thoughts.  Now no more.

However, there are plenty of other bots seeking relationships (and data). Perhaps I should say there are plenty of other bots, less salacious, yet capable of building relationships as demonstrated by the Gatebox 90-second concept movie (see above).

Global Companion or Assistant 

Xiaoice is  Xiaoice in China; Rinna in Japan; Zo in the US; Ruuh in India and Rinna in Indonesia.

Rinna, I mean, Xiaoice can be your companion or your assistant e.g. a customer service (assistant), social media assistant – across all platforms (Tencents BabyQ); home assistant (Huwawei);  virtual celebrity (Shibuya); virtual human (William Xu) and virtual human (culture and entertainment) – the NEXT singer and idol.

Meanwhile, Gateway suggests that your companion bot can fulfil some of your fundamental basic needs for relationships. What do you think? Post a comment below.

                What do you think? Please do post a comment below.

Training Data Used:

600m chats; 800m audience spread across China, Japan, USA, India and Indonesia. All together Microsoft collected chats from 140m daily users. In total Microsoft observed 30 billion conversations. With this much data and learnings,  they were able to develop their conversational  model from a simple retrieval model into a generation model and into empathy.

Rinna, I mean Xiaoice can be a companion or an assistant e.g. customer service (assistant), social media assistant – across all platforms (Tencents BabyQ); home assistant (Huwawei);  virtual celebrity (Shibuya); virtual human (William Xu) and virtual human (culture and entertainment) – the NEXT singer and idol.  Ying Wang 2019

The Big Questions by Jean Seah

‘Instead of dominating our technology, it is dominating us. We tend to use it as a substitute for things that only humans are capable of: love, friendship, communication.
‘As AI chatbots evolve to meet human needs, will they also alter human expectations of emotional intimacy, just as pornography has affected sexual intimacy?
Untrammelled by human imperfections, limitations and free-will, chatbots are already proving more endearing to users than troublesome humans who do not bend to their every whim.’
Some are convinced that Xiaoice will someday become their real-life soulmate.  What Pandora’s boxes are we opening as we advance further into virtual realms?’ (Jean Seah 2021).

Reincarnating Dead Loved Ones

The San Francisco Chronicle charts the sad story of a young man still grieving over the death of his fiancee and who finds a website that allows you to feed your loved one’s content (facebook comments, videos, audios) into an app to recreate your lost loved one as an AI-driven chatbot. This is a chilling story which you might find disturbing. Project December – a new website which blends AI & “chatbots. Choose from a selection or create your own. it uses software known as GPT-3 which was created by OpenAI, a SanFrancisco research group cofounded by Elon Musk – BUT it has ‘largely kept it under wraps’ citing ‘safety’ concerns.

Meanwhile, Microsoft are doing something similar and have already filed a patent which raises the possibility of digitally reincarnating people as chatbots. They may even create a 2D/3D model of the person by using images, depth information, and/or video data associated with that person.  The patent emphasizes the degree to which this chat bot will be trained to the individual’s personal traits, in particular, the “conversational attributes” of the person, “such as style, diction, tone, voice, intent, sentence/dialogue length and complexity, topic and consistency”.

Can Microsoft Digitally Reincarnate Dead People and Put Words in Their Mouth? 

Microsoft recently applied for a patent to possibly digitally reincarnate dead people as a chat bot. ‘The system would be fed (or trained) using “social data” such as “images, voice data, social media posts, electronic messages [and] written letters” to build a profile of a person. ‘ If there is not enough data to provide an answer on a specific topic, crowd-sourced conversational data stores may be used to fill in the gaps, which, say Forbes Barry Collins,  is ‘almost literally putting words in people’s mouths’.  This chat bot will be trained to the individual’s personal traits, in particular, the “conversational attributes” of the person, “such as style, diction, tone, voice, intent, sentence/dialogue length and complexity, topic and consistency”.  So, effectively,  from the output of a specific person, Microsoft can create a 2D or a 3D chatbot that will converse with you. This raises serious ethical issues.

Ethical Issues

I suppose, bigger questions await us – such as

1. What if the relatives do not want their deceased loved-ones becoming virtual chatbots and perhaps ‘living’ in a different place or with different people?
2. Do people now have to publicly ‘opt-out’ of being digitally reincarnated?
3. If the chatbot doesn’t have enough raw data (perhaps from FB, clubhouse or youtube content)  to provide an answer on a specific topic, would crowd-sourced conversational data stores may be used to fill in the gaps,  and start speaking for the chatbot (literally putting words in people’s mouths)?

Watch Ying Wang of Microsoft Conversational AI and Virtual Being Xiaoice on Virtual Beings Aug 22, 2019

Ying Wang of Microsoft

Watch TV Series ‘Westworld’ 2016 (from Michael Crichton’s  book Westworld 1973) – a theme park packed with humanoid robots creates real experiences – sometimes too real.

Read:

Collins, B. (2021) Microsoft Could Bring You Back From The Dead… As A Chat Bot, Forbes Jun 21,

Fagone, J. (2021) The Jessica Simulation: Love and loss in the age of A.I., San Francisco Chronicle 23 July

Seah, J.  (2021) Artificial girlfriends are holding China’s and Japan’s men in thrall, Mercatornet  Jan 7

 Zhang Wanqing (2020) The AI Girlfriend Seducing China’s Lonely Men, Sixth Tone, 7 Dec.

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If you liked this you might also enjoy some of my other posts:

What Will ChatGPT + ChatBots + Avatars Do To Us?

Artificial Influencers Use My Magic Marketing Formula (IRD) 

Artificial Influencers – Meet Shudu & Miquela

Here Come The Clever Bots – bursting with artificial intelligence? 

Here Come The Really Clever Bots – where AI meets customer needs

AI and Data – Crisis Coming?

SOSTAC® Plan for developing your own ChatBot

Join me in Clubhouse in my club called SOSTAC® Plans any Friday 1pm – 1.30pm (UK time)  for a chat, Q&A, observations about SOSTAC(r) Plans and any other marketing related issues including AI Driven Bots.

The post Chinese GirlBot With 465m Boyfriends appeared first on PR Smith Marketing.

The post appeared first on PR Smith Marketing.

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Here is a 4-minute insight into the psychology behind the Facebook data-breach.  Click the ‘play’ button below to watch this excellent 4-minute video from the BBC about Cambridge Analytica.  Various reports suggest Facebook  fines were anywhere between £500,000 and £4b . Do any of you know?

Up to 87m users’ data was improperly shared – watch this 4 minute video

Facebook has said it believes that up to 87 million users’ data was improperly shared with Cambridge Analytica

Cambridge Analytica claims its data and research helped Donald Trump win the US presidency. But how did it turn a Facebook user’s data into a personality type, and what did it do with that information? Source: Psychology behind FB data breach (BBC 9 Apr 2018). Facebook collects data from your Posts & comments; Events you attend; Calls and Messages; Location; Interests; Web & App Activity; Instagram & WhatsApp activity; Likes and reactions; Photos; friends and friend groups.

Facebook CEO, Mark Zuckerberg being grilled by Democratic lawmaker Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez back in Oct 2019 (5 min video).

Can I target predominantly black zip codes and advertise to them the incorrect election date?

Cortez: “Facebook now allows politicians to pay fb to spread disinformation in 2020 elections and in the future, so… how far can I can push this in the next year? Under your policy, using census data as well, could I pay to target predominantly black zip codes and advertise to them the incorrect election date?  Zuckerberg: “No.”

Cortez: Could I run ads on FB  targeting Republicans in primaries saying that they voted for the green new deal?”  Zuckerberg: “I don’t know the answer to that off the top of my head.” Cortez: “You don’t know!”

So you won’t take down lies, or you will take down lies?….. Zuckerberg “it depends…”  The Facebook CEO also declined to disclose when he found out the company was harvesting and selling user data to influence elections.

Advertising used to be regulated and in the UK it had to adhere to four basic principles: Legeal, Decent, Honest and Truthful plus a swathe of specific regulations for specific industry sectors and media types. The US 2020 Presidential Election Ad Campaigns and Social Media Manipulation (incl trolling) needs to be regulated. But perhaps not sufficiently in time for this election?

Fast Forward to Great Britain 2021 

Here is the MP (Member of Parliament)  Dawn Butler asking the Health Secretary, Matt Hancock, about still using companies associated with the discredited Cambridge Analytica.

“Are you aware that Palantir and Faculty have links to the discredited Cambridge Analytica?”

Secretary of State, Hancock, answers “Eh No.”

Ms Butler continues with: “Palantir reportedly taught Cambridge Analytica how to scrape data – that means you are putting at risk everyone’s data in the country and giving it to organisations such as Palantir?”

All Posts

Is Palantir owned by Peter Thiel (facebook board director and influential supporter of Trump)?

Did Faculty do the data modelling for BREXIT campaign (owned by Dominic Cummings friend, Marc Warner)?

So the ongoing battle for data, data privacy, data security and data exploitation continues many years later.

Facebook Files: 5 things leaked documents reveal – BBC News  24 Sep 2021

Celebrities were treated differently by Facebook

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If you enjoyed  this you might like these:

How Obama Won Two U.S. Presidential Elections Obama’s Head of Digital reveals the secrets of his success to me

Marketing Gone Wrong: Is the Dark Web Worse Than Subliminal Seduction? Shocking video about Facebook’s role in the BREXIT referendum

The Dark Arts Of Marketing – Breaking Down Society to Create a New Culture – Using Data & IRD If you think the former post was shocking try this!

How Trump Won (a SOSTAC® Analysis)   an  observation using my planning framework

GDPR (General Data Protection Regulations) – Opportunity to Boost CX or a Threat of Closure?

The post Facebook Data: How it was used by Cambridge Analytica & Might Be Used in 2020 Election & Still Is Used in 2021? appeared first on PR Smith Marketing.