Why do we need machines and humans?
When we talk about AI, we so often speak in terms of Human vs. Machine. Hybrid Intelligence re-frames this idea, instead prompting us to consider Human and Machine.
As ChatGPT, Microsoft Copilot, and other artificial intelligence tools continue to revolutionize how we create content, one of the biggest questions we’ve heard from leaders is whether these technologies will be able to replace human creative work, currently one of the pillars of the modern marketing function.
This isn’t a bad question. The fact that ChatGPT can produce a blog post in seconds presents massive opportunities for B2B marketers who struggle to hit their content volume goals. However, the fact that the technology sometimes “hallucinates” facts that don’t exist, makes it dangerous to use without human supervision. The mixture of benefits and risks means the future of this technology is somewhat unclear, at least from the perspective of content marketing workflows.
Based on our experimentation with these tools over the last several months, we strongly believe that artificial intelligence will become a key part of content marketing within the next year or two. Whereas most people see AI as something to compete with, we think that the future of marketing involves deep collaboration between humans and machines in a configuration we call hybrid intelligence.
Explaining Hybrid Intelligence
Much like media studies pioneer Marshall McLuhan might say, if we understand a technology like ChatGPT to be an extension of the human mind, what we find is that a human being working with an artificial intelligence becomes a hybrid intelligence, or two kinds of intelligences working together.
Therefore, instead of thinking about content marketing workflows from the perspective of humans competing with machines, we can think of how empowering marketing professionals with ChatGPT can make them better and faster versions of themselves.
“This is not a race against the machines. If we race against them, we lose. This is a race with the machines. You’ll be paid in the future based on how well you work with robots. Ninety percent of your coworkers will be unseen machines.”
― Kevin Kelly, “The Inevitable”
This means that to maximize your ROI on artificial intelligence, you must consider what artificial intelligence tools do very well, and what they can’t do well. For example, it would be inefficient and tedious to spend hours trying to get ChatGPT to generate insights on your target market. However, once your human-driven market research has generated an insight, that can be fed into ChatGPT to create raw content in seconds.
Deploying Hybrid Intelligences in Your Business
Our experimentations with ChatGPT suggest that it is very good at accomplishing specific tasks within content marketing workflows. For example, having it generate rough content for blog introductions can give writers an excellent starting point for their articles, shaving fifteen to thirty minutes off of the production cycle. Additionally, ChatGPT is good at providing general information about a topic, making it a helpful sidekick for writers tackling difficult or complex subjects.
There are more creative uses for ChatGPT as well, which we use the word remix to describe. This involves feeding ChatGPT a piece of content and asking it to rewrite it in various formats or styles. Aside from being able to emulate the styles of famous writers, ChatGPT can take a blog post and give you five tweets based on its content, or several LinkedIn posts, or both.
With Microsoft Copilot on the horizon, it will become possible to remix Word documents into Excel spreadsheets or PowerPoint slide decks. Based on our experience, the thirty minutes of drudge work saved here and there quickly adds up to more time spent on strategy, content quality, and further process improvements.
Although we don’t ship content without human supervision, AI has become a valuable tool in our workflows because it helps us accomplish more in less time. We are even experimenting with ChatGPT’s new API, which is allowing us to automate research tasks and create custom tools. This, we think, is where the real excitement lies – customization.
Customizing AI Tools For Your Business
As powerful and useful as hybrid intelligences may be, we think that customized tools will be where businesses find the most efficiencies. One example of this is our own WhatsMyValueProp.com, which uses some custom code and the API offered by ChatGPT to scrape websites and collect information on their value proposition. It’s tools like these that we think will save companies the most time, but to develop them requires strong knowledge of your business workflows and the courage to experiment.
The prospect of having a second brain researching, operating, and providing automated to marketers is quite exciting, as it means that the many hours spent on secondary research and market intelligence can be refocused on insights, strategy, and content. With the additional efficiencies that marketers can gain by co-writing content with artificial intelligences, suddenly a team of two or three becomes able to do the work of ten.
The Bar is Being Raised
Much like websites, email lists, social media, and traditional marketing automation became pillars of B2B marketing following their release, our opinion is that AI-enabled workflows are a must-have for companies that want to stay competitive. Teams not using tools like ChatGPT and Microsoft Copilot are going to not only find themselves struggling to compete with the volume of content their competitors release, but the quality of their content will suffer without supporting research from AI.
To help businesses through this transition, we’ve created a free guide on how to integrate AI into content marketing workflows. Based on our own experience and experimentation, and co-written with artificial intelligence tools, the information and best practices we’ve included will give you the foundation you need to begin deploying these tools effectively and immediately.
About Marketing CoPilot
Marketing CoPilot Inc. builds digital sales engines that help companies find customers and keep customers. Our proven methodology improves demand generation, resulting in qualified leads for your sales team. Companies that implement our program have reduced their cost of lead acquisition, improved the quality of their leads, and increased revenue.
We have worked with over 200 companies in the B2B technology and manufacturing sector to turn digital lead generation around. Our proven methodology to map your buyers’ journey to make an educated buying decision, has helped countless sales and marketing teams win. In today’s cluttered and confusing online environment, we can de-clutter your content strategy and get you on track to better sales results. Your website and web presence should be helping, not hurting your lead generation efforts.
