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LEADERSHIP LESSONS from STEVE JOBSSteve Jobs is widely regarded as one of the most innovative and successful business le...
15/05/2023

LEADERSHIP LESSONS from STEVE JOBS

Steve Jobs is widely regarded as one of the most innovative and successful business leaders of our time. In a 2012 article from Harvard Business Review, the author shares some of the real leadership lessons we can learn from Jobs. Here are some key takeaways:

1. Focus: Steve Jobs gained a reputation for his steadfast dedication to producing products that were not only visually appealing but also user-friendly. He believed that by simplifying intricate concepts, he could enhance the user experience. This ideology is reflected in Apple's product range, which boasts sleek, minimalist designs and user-friendly interfaces.

2. Simplify: According to Jobs, a great design was founded on simplicity. He famously stated that "simple can be harder than complex," emphasizing the importance of eliminating unnecessary components to create a more straightforward product. Jobs firmly believed that by reducing complexity, Apple could create products that were not only more sophisticated but also easier to use.

3. Take responsibility: Jobs held the belief that, as the CEO, making difficult decisions was his obligation. He took accountability for the triumphs of his company and products and abstained from blaming external factors for any shortcomings. His team was motivated to work harder and take ownership of their projects as a result of this sense of responsibility.

4. Bend reality: Jobs had a unique talent for perceiving the world in a manner distinct from the majority of individuals. He possessed the capability to envision concepts that had not yet been brought to life and to work relentlessly to make them a reality. Jobs was a trailblazer who pushed the limits of what was achievable, and Apple's triumph was significantly impacted by his eagerness to take risks and incorporate innovative ideas.

5. Say no: Jobs believed that it was just as important to reject ideas or projects as it was to accept them. He recognized the value of focusing one's attention and removing distractions. Jobs kept Apple focused on developing exceptional products that would revolutionize the world by rejecting projects that didn't fit with the company's vision.

6. Push for perfection: Jobs was recognized for his rigorous and perfectionist approach. He put a lot of pressure on himself and his team to produce flawlessly executed products. By ensuring that its products were not only aesthetically pleasing but also extremely practical and dependable, Apple was able to set itself apart from its rivals.

What do you think of these lessons? Do you agree with them? Let me know in the comments below!

Source Article: HBR – The Real Leadership Lessons of Steve Jobs by Walter Isaacson

https://www.facebook.com/4iAfrica/Entrepreneurs and Innovators go Digital. Exciting Networking News here for Serious Ent...
13/05/2023

https://www.facebook.com/4iAfrica/
Entrepreneurs and Innovators go Digital. Exciting Networking News here for Serious Entrepreneurs! Join today....

Finalists in the Global Startup Awards – Please vote for me

Introducing one of the largest and most sustainable NBS - Nature Based Climate Change Solutions in the World - Mega Scale!

WhatsApp developing newsletter toolWhatsApp is working on a new feature that will allow users to send and receive newsle...
03/03/2023

WhatsApp developing newsletter tool

WhatsApp is working on a new feature that will allow users to send and receive newsletters similar to those of mass email services.

WABetaInfo has uncovered code in the mobile app referring to a feature dubbed “Newsletter”.

From its analysis of the code, the publication surmised it was a one-to-many tool for broadcasting information.

It appears to be intended for quickly and easily sending useful updates to people and groups with shared interests, like members of the same neighbourhood, sports teams, or other organisations.

WABetaInfo said because it will be possible to reach an undefined and large number of people, the feature will not be protected with end-to-end encryption.

But it argued because a newsletter function uses one-way, one-to-many communication, there was no practical privacy benefit of end-to-end encryption for users.

The phone numbers of those users who create and subscribe to a newsletter will always be masked and hidden to protect their identity.

WABetaInfo said the current code suggested Newsletter will be a separate option under the Status tab.

Users will be able to sign up for a newsletter by searching for its name using a designated handle.

They will also be able to control which newsletters they follow, and other users won’t be able to see what newsletters they receive.

WABetaInfo said while it’s true that WhatsApp’s Communities groups feature allowed for mass messaging similar to a newsletter system, it had some limitations.

Among these is that Communities are limited to 5,000 participants, the message creator’s phone number is visible to everyone, and the list of participants are visible to the sender.

“Newsletters break all these limitations by masking phone numbers, and we believe it will be the perfect tool to connect with an audience,” said WABetaInfo.

It noted that “Newsletter” may be a placeholder name for the feature, and it might change if Meta rolls it out to the beta and stable versions of WhatsApp.

Telegram calls use significantly more data than WhatsAppTelegram voice calls consume substantially more data than WhatsA...
03/03/2023

Telegram calls use significantly more data than WhatsApp

Telegram voice calls consume substantially more data than WhatsApp’s, even with reduced data usage enabled, a MyBroadband test shows.

WhatsApp and Telegram have useful built-in measuring tools that show how much data you spend on different parts of the apps, such as calls and messages.

Both also feature options to reduce the data use for in-app calls, creating four main testing scenarios.

We used a Samsung S22+ and a Huawei P40 Pro Plus for testing to see if there would be any difference in data use between devices.

In each scenario, we made two 5-minute calls from each device to the other and measured the data they used with WhatsApp and Telegram’s built-in tools.

All the tests were done over a fast Wi-Fi connection for a fair comparison.

In all cases, the reduced consumption tests had the option on the same setting for both devices.

WhatsApp used the least data with the “Use less data for calls” option enabled on both devices.

The phones each used 220 kB on average for a 5-minute call, which is surprisingly efficient.

Even disabling the option to use less data still resulted in a win for WhatsApp, at an average of 620.25 kB for the 5-minute call.

Telegram used significantly more data overall and confused us by using more data with the “Use less data for calls” option enabled compared to when it was disabled.

With the setting disabled, it used an average of 1,653 kB, which increased to an average of 1,927 kB when we switched it on.

We also found that the two devices used nearly identical amounts of data for a call during our testing.

This confirmed that different Android device brands should use similar amounts of data when making WhatsApp and Telegram data calls.

Data consumption varied significantly depending on whether the “data saver” options were enabled.

While data consumption is important, higher bandwidths may offer better call quality, which was not a consideration for this test.

WhatsApp vs Telegram Calls
Test WhatsApp Telegram
5 Minute Data Consumption (Default) 650 kB 1,653 kB
5 Minute Data Consumption (Less data consumption for calls) 220 kB 1,927 kB

Lawlessness reigns in SALatest statistics show that SA is one of the world’s three most dangerous countries“We cannot su...
14/02/2023

Lawlessness reigns in SA
Latest statistics show that SA is one of the world’s three most dangerous countries

“We cannot surrender the freedom and safety of our people to criminals. What we are witnessing in our province is totally unacceptable, and police have assured us that they are working round the clock to arrest these criminals. We are confident that the police will win this battle.”

The above is an attempt by Sipho Hlomuka, community safety MEC in KwaZulu-Natal, at raising the spirits of South Africans, who woke up to shocking news on Saturday that Kiernan Forbes — a chart-topping rap star known by stage name AKA — was shot fatally at a restaurant in Durban.

Sadly, it is safe to assume that many of us are not reassured that his words will amount to anything tangible in extricating SA from an unwanted position as one of the most dangerous places to live.

For starters, murder surged by more than 60% over the past decade, putting SA per capita rate at 42 murders per 100,000. That puts SA in the three most dangerous countries in the world. Worse still, there’s a chance that the criminals will get away with murder. According to the SA Police Service statistics, as crunched by the Institute for Securities Studies, the ability of the police to solve murder has fallen 55% since 2012.

The list of unsolved murders in SA is long: the murder of national football team goalkeeper and captain Senzo Meyiwa, allegedly shot dead in a botched burglary in 2014, remains unsolved. Who can forget the mass shooting at a tavern in Soweto in June 2022 when a group of men arrived in a minibus taxi and opened fire on patrons? This too, alongside many other crimes since then, has remained unresolved.

As frightening as this police ineptitude is, the biggest danger is that more and more South Africans will lose faith in the police and criminal justice system. What will follow is that people will have no reason to report a crime, leading to more crime as legally cynical citizens will be forced to take the law into their own hands because that’s the only logical step left to take.

We are edging ever closer to a state of anarchy. The least President Cyril Ramaphosa’s government can do is to acknowledge that SA policing is in need of a foundational revamp, and come up with a coherent, credible action plan to make SA safer.

https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/dxlouB9bqozwaDxTuwIk8qgzzXUMPE_3jWmeCEaWIwwP8MRAVUAItQI4U7CRbWTospYxcHwIYl_8tt8j-J-UQBDrOYRAQYOMabr9xOWE63VUog=s1200
Rapper AKA was shot dead in Florida Rd in Durban on Friday February 10. Picture: Instagram/AKA via Thotloetso Kutlwano Mogotsi

Robberies surge as criminals take advantage of South Africa’s power outagesThe acute energy crisis in South Africa has a...
12/02/2023

Robberies surge as criminals take advantage of South Africa’s power outages

The acute energy crisis in South Africa has adversely affected all aspects of the society. Regular and lengthy power outages – which started in 2007 are also contributing to an escalation in the levels of criminal activity, especially street crime. The most recent quarterly crime statistics – have undermined an ailing economy and food security, as well as health and educational outcomes.

It has become evident that power cuts added to a significant increase in all robbery categories – for July to September 2022 – compared to the same period in 2021. This corresponded with the most severe power cuts the country had ever experienced.

In addition, the police service’s annual crime data for the period 2012/13-2021/22 shows there was a spike in robberies in 2015. This was a year of more power cuts (35 days) than previous years.

Based on claims data, insurance companies are suggesting a strong link between power cuts and property crime in wealthier areas. In addition, a growing number of reports from both rich and poor parts of the country link power cuts to increases in interpersonal crime, particularly robberies.

Get your news from people who know what they’re talking about.
The police and the police minister have publicly linked power cuts to robbery and other crimes in recent months.

So, how are the power cuts contributing to increases in robberies?

It is not possible to provide a definitive answer to this question as no rigorous studies showing causality between power cuts and robbery occurrence in the country have been undertaken. But one can look to crime prevention and policing theory, and studies from other countries, to provide insights into the possible link between power outages and robbery. This theory advocates that power outages (the power utility, Eskom, calls these “loadshedding”) undermine crime prevention measures. This is especially so at night as these measures are largely dependent on street lighting. Power outages also undermine the effectiveness of policing as patrols and other police services are curtailed.

Electricity and crime
The crime prevention through environmental design theory is helpful.

It uses two principal measures – target hardening; and surveillance and visibility.

Target hardening uses measures such as locked doors, gates, fencing, alarm systems, CCTV cameras and burglar bars in and around buildings to deter criminals. It is widely accepted in the criminology literature that target hardening has the potential to reduce the risk of home invasions and business robberies in some contexts. These measures should ideally be combined with other crime prevention interventions.

In South Africa, private security companies have suggested that criminals have taken advantage of the fact that many home and business security systems are compromised during power outages.

Yet, robberies tend to be more prevalent in poorer urban areas in the country, where residents cannot afford to install such security systems. And most robberies take place in public spaces.

Read more: South Africans are feeling more insecure: do Ramaphosa's plans add up?

Surveillance and visibility assumes that people are likely to be discouraged from robbing others in public spaces, where their actions will be clearly seen by others (“eyes on the street”) and they may be identified and caught by police.

This can include the presence of people in the area, either going about their normal daily activities or actively patrolling, and the presence of CCTV cameras. Lighting in public spaces, especially at night, is nonetheless an essential requirement for visibility and surveillance to be effective. Studies from other countries have shown that street lighting and CCTV cameras are effective in reducing robberies.

Power outages, particularly at night, clearly undermine visibility. This is evident from the many reports of people being targeted by criminals while walking in the streets after dark.

Systematic reviews of policing research have shown that regular and visible police patrols, mainly when directed at crime hot spots, are an effective crime prevention intervention. Obviously, police cannot satisfactorily patrol at night during power outages. This makes the work of South Africa’s police more dangerous.

In response to a parliamentary question about the impact of power outages on the work of the South African Police Service (SAPS), Bheki Cele, the police minister, responded that:

(It) has an adverse effect on service delivery in the SAPS … on all communication and network operations, including the registering of case dockets … A number of stations cannot function at night because there are no lights …

There have also been reports of some police emergency call centres being uncontactable during power outages.

No easy solutions
There are no practical short- to medium-term crime prevention alternatives for the authorities to pursue during power outages, other than exempting high crime areas from the outages. That might not be possible in such a severe electricity crisis.

One positive development has been increased community patrols in some areas. Regrettably, some of this community crime prevention work has led to acts of vigilantism.

Security companies suggest that criminals take advantage of the fact that many home and business security systems get compromised during power outages.

Heat stress is rising in southern AfricaClimate experts show where and when it’s worst.https://www.moneyweb.co.za/wp-con...
12/02/2023

Heat stress is rising in southern AfricaClimate experts show where and when it’s worst.

https://www.moneyweb.co.za/wp-content/uploads/2023/02/file-20230125-2999-tc5bml-555x369.jpg

Most of us have felt either too hot or too cold at some point in our lives. Depending on where we live, we may feel too cold quite often each winter, and too hot for a few days in summer. As we’re writing this in late January 2023 many southern Africans are probably feeling very hot and fatigued; a prolonged regional heatwave began around 9 January.

Being too hot isn’t just uncomfortable. Heat stress causes dehydration, headaches, nausea – and, when people are exposed to high temperatures for protracted periods, they risk severe health outcomes and could even die. For instance, at least five people working on farms in South Africa’s Northern Cape province have died from heat stroke in January. At least 90 people died in India and Pakistan in May 2022 during a devastating heatwave.

The situation is only going to get worse. The United Nations’ Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change warns that “globally, the percentage of the population exposed to deadly heat stress is projected to increase from today’s 30% to 48%-76% by the end of the century, depending on future warming levels and location”.

We wanted to create a detailed picture of when and where heat stress occurs in southern Africa. By applying a global gridded dataset of a human thermal comfort index, we found that there has been a consistent change in thermal comfort – the human body’s experience of the outdoor thermal environment – from the 1970s to today. Simply put, southern Africans are experiencing heat stress more often than in 1979.

Given that global temperatures are set to rise in the coming years and decades, these findings are worrying. Warmer temperatures will mean that regions that were classified as having “favourable” thermal comfort will more regularly be classified as regions of “thermal stress”. Heatwaves have been projected to occur more frequently, and to be more intense.

Measuring thermal comfort (or stress)
Over the past two decades, scientists from across the world have developed the Universal Thermal Climate Index. It has advanced our ability to model human thermal comfort levels, ranging from cold stress to heat stress. Earlier thermal comfort indices typically only modelled heat stress because they mainly measured the combined effects of humidity and temperature to calculate an equivalent temperature.

Temperature extremes can put people’s health at risk. Authors supplied.
This equivalent temperature would essentially measure how we feel in relation to the surrounding environment. For example, at 5pm on 23 January, Johannesburg’s outdoor air temperature was 29˚C; relative humidity was 30%; the sky was clear and there was a gentle breeze of 16km/h.

For someone outside, the equivalent temperature would have been slightly higher than the outdoor temperature (possibly as high as 32˚C), largely due to the effect of relative humidity and limited wind chill.

The Universal Thermal Climate Index considers a wider range of factors that influence thermal comfort than its predecessors. In addition to air temperature, relative humidity and wind speed, it also includes radiant heat, a measure of how hot we feel when standing in the sun rather than in the shade.

The index is built for humans navigating the real world: it includes a clothing model and an exertion model.

During the current southern African heatwave, for instance, the model assumes that nobody is dressed in a fuzzy jersey. In winter, it assumes nobody in countries like Namibia, Botswana, Zimbabwe, Mozambique, Eswatini, Lesotho and South Africa is wearing shorts and a T-shirt.

Ultimately, the inclusion of all these factors means that the Universal Thermal Climate Index is a more accurate and realistic indicator of the level of thermal comfort (or discomfort) perceived by the human body.

Southern African application
To apply the Universal Thermal Climate Index to southern Africa, we drew data from the ERA5-HEAT data collection, which provides an hourly dataset, of the equivalent temperature derived from the index, for 1940 to present; it is produced by the European Centre for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts.

We zoomed into the time period 1979-2021 and considered thermal comfort at annual, seasonal and monthly scales. Over these scales, we calculated the average climatology, and investigated changes and year-to-year variability patterns in day-time, night-time and daily average equivalent temperatures across southern Africa.

We found that heat stress occurs most widely during the summer months (December to March); cold stress occurs mainly during the winter months (June to August). Heat stress was, as one would expect, most common during the day and cold stress more common at night.

Drilling further into the data, we discovered that, from September to March, more than 85% of the subcontinent experiences day-time heat stress. Over parts of the Northern Cape in South Africa, Namibia, Botswana, Zimbabwe and Mozambique, day-time heat stress can reach very strong, and potentially dangerous, heat stress levels during these months.

From May to August, our results showed that more than 80% of southern Africa experiences night-time cold stress, and over much of South Africa night-time cold stress can reach moderate cold stress. In short, it’s unusual for people in the region to feel extremely cold and fairly common in certain months to feel extremely hot, especially outside.

Going forward: why it’s bad news
Everyone in southern Africa is at risk of heat stress. But children, the elderly, and those with underlying comorbidities are more vulnerable.

Those working outdoors, like farm and construction workers, are especially vulnerable because there’s little that can be done to adapt to and cope with heat stress while working outdoors during the day-time. Adjusting work hours to avoid peak heat hours is one measure that could be applied.

There are also some coping mechanisms you could apply in your daily life. Limit your exposure to the sun by moving to shade or indoors to a well-ventilated or air-conditioned room. Keep hydrated (with water), avoid strenuous activities (like sports or excessive manual labour), wear lightweight protective clothing, a hat and sunblock, and, if you feel ill, seek medical attention.The Conversation

Sarah Roffe, Researcher, Agricultural Research Council; Adriaan Van Der Walt, Lecturer: Physical Geography and GIS, University of the Free State, and Jennifer Fitchett, Associate Professor of Physical Geography, University of the Witwatersrand

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article. https://theconversation.com/heat-stress-is-rising-in-southern-africa-climate-experts-show-where-and-when-its-worst-198455

Fom:Daily MaverickOUR BURNING PLANETEXCAVATING THE PASTThe trail of red rust that leads to the beginning of human cultur...
12/02/2023

Fom:

Daily Maverick
OUR BURNING PLANET

EXCAVATING THE PAST
The trail of red rust that leads to the beginning of human culture

https://www.dailymaverick.co.za/wp-content/uploads/2023/02/DJI_0151-1.jpg?resize=768,432
Up on the Bomvu Ridge, high up in the hills north of the Eswatini capital of Mbabane, the re-excavation of Lion Cavern — possibly the oldest mine in the world — is lending further evidence to southern Africa’s position as not only the cradle of humankind, but also of human culture.

‘It’s not a cave, it’s a mine and totally artificial. They mined ochre, a form of oxidised iron. Basically, it is red rust, technically known as haematite,” says Bob Forrester, a heritage consultant for the Eswatini National Trust Commission, working with Dr Gregor Donatus Bader and his team from the Senckenberg Centre for Human Evolution and Palaeoenvironment (HEP), at the University of Tübingen, which will send researchers and excavators to visit the site in April.

https://www.dailymaverick.co.za/wp-content/uploads/2023/02/unnamed-4.jpg?resize=768,217
Scenery from Ngwenya Mine north over the Steynsdorp Valley in South Africa. (Photo: Bob Forrester)

Forrester is standing at the entrance to Lion Cavern, engaged in conversation with a New York TV presenter and Instagrammer. Sprawled out far below is a valley in neighbouring South Africa. On the south side of the cavern, baboons scale the almost vertical walls of an old, green water-filled quarry. The whole area, of predominantly red rock, is known as Ngwenya Mine.

“The reason I say it’s a benchmark, says Forrester, “is because it shows the first mining of ochre worldwide.” A strong claim, but one that he and his colleagues from universities in various countries aim to prove.

Red rust — from Stilbaai to Swaziland
I had first learnt of the early use of ochre far south of Lion Cavern, in Cave 13b, below Mossel Bay’s Pinnacle Point, which could be regarded as the hub of the cradle of human culture (prominent palaeontologists have posited, after well over a decade of digging, that a chunk of the Southern Cape coastline could well be the birthplace of anatomically modern humans).

To read the full article and view all pictures, please visit:
https://www.dailymaverick.co.za/article/2023-02-08-the-trail-of-red-rust-that-leads-to-the-beginning-of-human-culture/

CALLING ALL ENTREPRENEURS!Global Startup Awards/GSA https://www.globalstartupawards.com is the largest independent start...
02/02/2023

CALLING ALL ENTREPRENEURS!
Global Startup Awards/GSA https://www.globalstartupawards.com is the largest independent startup ecosystem competition in the world and is present in over 120 countries (divided into 12 regions) on 3 continents and includes Africa..

GSA Africa is searching across all 55 countries to identify solutions in multiple categories with a focus on financial inclusion, HealthTech, AgriTech, Fintech, renewable energy, sustainability and women-in-tech and is accepting nominations from those regional innovation leaders with tech-based startups solving the biggest problems facing Africa and the world such as global warming and climate change.

If you wish to participate, please email full name, email, website, country and the categories you are applying for (list on website) to the GSA Ambassador, [email protected] before February 19, 2023 for consideration to be nominated into the competition. Thank you and good luck!

Global Startup Awards Africa: https://www.globalstartupawardsafrica.com

GLOBAL STARTUP AWARDS AFRICA AFRICA IS NOW A PART OF THE LARGEST, INDEPENDENT STARTUP ECOSYSTEM AWARDS PLATFORM IN THE WORLD. The Global Startup Awards (GSA) Africa has expanded its footprint in 2021. Africa’s fastest-growing innovation community invites all innovation leaders to access new market...

01/02/2023

Interesting article from Bernard Marr on LinkledIn about Ai - gamechanger..

How Will ChatGPT Affect Your Job If You Work In Advertising And Marketing?
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Recently, there’s been a lot of excitement about ChatGPT – the public preview release of OpenAI’s chatbot powered by the GPT3 language model. There’s no better way to get people interested in – and perhaps worrying about – artificial intelligence (AI) than showing it in action. And ChatGPT certainly acts as a powerful demonstration of what AI can do today.

Ask GPT to answer a question, or to create a piece of writing, and it will respond in well-structured, natural-sounding human language that most people simply would not guess has been created by a machine. Of course, this has immediately got people asking what the implications are for us humans – and one of the first professions to fear that they could be facing the chop are marketers.

This seems to be rational because many aspects of marketing and advertising involve creating text – whether it is writing copy for adverts, creating marketing emails, or just writing simple social media posts. Now that everyday machines are apparently able to carry out these tasks, is everybody working in these jobs in danger of becoming redundant?

The fact is that throughout history, we've seen that new developments in technology have tended to create new jobs as quickly as it makes old jobs redundant. What's more, the jobs that are created are often more technical, creative, or highly-skilled – meaning that they are higher paying and often more rewarding.

For example, the arrival of mechanized farm equipment reduced the need for unskilled field workers but created a need for skilled engineers and technicians. And the dawn of the computing era made a lot of low-paid clerical filing workers and typists redundant but created higher-paid jobs in software engineering and data administration. Likewise, the World Economic Forum predicts that while jobs will be lost to AI, in the long-term, it will lead to job growth. So let’s take a look at how the arrival of this undoubtedly game-changing technology could affect your career prospects if you’re working – or looking to work – in the field of marketing and advertising.

Firstly - What Exactly is ChatGPT?
ChatGPT is a virtual assistant, or chatbot, that uses a field of machine learning known as natural language processing (NLP). It is an example of generative AI, because it can create something completely new that has never existed before. As well as human languages like English, it can also write computer code.

ChatGPT is really a user interface for a large language model called GPT3 (Generative Pretrained Transformer 3) developed by OpenAI. Although precise details of the training data have not been made public, it’s known that it includes a massive dataset of 175 billion parameters, including books, newspapers, and research papers, and a snapshot of the internet taken in 2021. It was trained using unsupervised learning, meaning that the information it was given was not labeled. Instead, it simply records which words are used and analyzes the context and relationships between them. This allows it to then predict what words, and in what order, it should use to create the best response. Although the results it is capable of may seem amazing, the algorithms that make up ChatGPT and GPT-3 are really quite simple and are all based on statistics. The “intelligence” is all possible due to the sheer size of the training dataset and the speed at which it is capable of processing requests.

How will jobs in marketing or advertising be affected by ChatGPT?
If you work in a creative role in advertising or marketing, it's likely that writing constitutes at least some of your responsibilities. This means that the first time you see what natural language AIs like ChatGPT are capable of, you might be wondering whether you are soon going to be replaced.
In theory, companies can now use the technology to create copy for advertising, marketing emails, social media posts, long-form content marketing pieces, and website copy.
It’s important to remember, though, that everything ChatGPT writes or creates is based on what it understands about something that has been written before. This means it isn’t actually capable of original thought or creativity in the same way as humans.

What this means is that marketers who are used to working in a routine, formulaic way might have reason to be worried, those who are capable of applying truly human qualities should have nothing to fear.

For example, a popular marketing model today is influencer marketing. Influencers – in theory - are individuals that have developed a relationship with their audience based on human connections. Their audience is interested in the content they create because of who has written or created it – they don’t want content that’s been created by a generic robot.
Likewise, if you write social media posts for a living, then – if you are doing it successfully – it's likely your audience is interested in the authentic voice of your brand and the opportunity to connect with the humans behind it. This element of a marketer’s work can still not be replicated well by a machine, and it will likely be some time before it can.

The simplest way to think of it is that natural language technologies can be used to replace a lot of the hum-drum, routine elements of the job. This could include creating lists, defining the structure of content marketing pieces or advertising, or ensuring that every item from a list of key points has been addressed in a piece of text.
Other ways in which ChatGPT can be used to automate routine aspects of marketing work include:
· Market research – It can quickly generate a list of key players in any industry as well as their most important products and services.
· Search Engine Optimization (SEO) – ChatGPT can be used to generate copy that includes keywords that search engines look for when ranking pages. However, care must be taken not to fall foul of algorithms that penalize sites for using computer-generated content.
· Product descriptions – Generating bulk descriptions for e-commerce sites where product catalogs are frequently updated.
When using ChatGPT for any of these use cases, it’s important to be wary of the platform's weaknesses. Specifically, its training data has not been fully audited for bias, meaning that bias may sometimes creep into its output. And as its training is based on a snapshot of data taken in 2021, it has limited information about anything that’s happened since then.

I work in marketing – what can I do to avoid becoming redundant?
If you can master using these abilities to augment your own creativity and human skills, then you won’t have to worry about AI making you redundant. Instead, you can concentrate on using it to become a more effective and efficient marketer.
It’s important to remember, though, that the worst thing to do at the moment is to bury your head in the sand and pretend that this technology doesn’t exist, and that it isn’t going to bring dramatic change to many industries – including yours.

As we have learned from previous eras of accelerated technology-driven change – such as the industrial revolution or the computer age – those who prosper will be those who learn to work alongside the technology. This means harnessing its power to assist us while we concentrate on developing and exploiting our uniquely human characteristics. This might include creativity, strategic thinking, empathy, and emotional intelligence.
Identifying, understanding, and building a relationship with a target audience is a critical part of any marketer’s job, and while AIs like ChatGPT or GPT-3 can assist with this, they are still not able to do it as strategically and effectively as a human.

However – a word of warning – we are still only seeing the very earliest iterations of this technology. GPT-4 is already known to exist, though has not been made public yet, and is said to be 100 times more powerful than GPT-3.
With this power, it’s possible that GPT-4 will be able to come closer to emulating some of the human qualities I’ve mentioned. For example, it may be able to develop simulated personalities that audiences may relate to more closely than they do with the generic, robot voice of GPT-3.

What this means is that anyone wanting to ensure they remain effective and competitive in their role in the future has to keep up-to-date with the latest developments in the world of AI. That the world will be changed forever by AI is inevitable – and understanding when and how those changes will occur, and how they will affect you, is key to ensuring its effect on your life will be a positive one.

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