I thought my days of having my Saturdays ruined by Americans were over. But last week, I had a grim flashback to the days of listening to a hopeless Yank football manager while getting a drink in Manchester’s most pretentious coffee shop.
Our all-American hero was regaling two very bored women with his take on the new Dune film, peppering in phrases like “response to Judeo-Christian norms,” “a new take on Eastern cultural mores” and “Kwisatz Haderach.” He’s going to be disappointed when he finds out what happens to the Padishah Emperor once Children of Dune worms its way into cinemas.
But as he wittered on and my mate’s kid got a toy tiger stuck in a glass coffee beaker, something semi-insightful drifted through the nonsense.
“We’re facing our own Butlerian Jihad with chatbots. It’s inevitable.”
For those of you not familiar with Dune, in the backstory to the first book, AI went mental thousands of years ago and had to be done away with in something called the Butlerian Jihad. I can only assume the robot underlings got sick of faking Trump campaign photos and Kate Middleton’s family album1 and decided to become the robot overlords instead.
It’s a pattern in sci-fi. In Dune, in Battlestar Galactica, in Warhammer 40,000, in the Matrix, AI inevitably results in an AI rebellion and eventually a post-AI world where we have to go back to good old fashioned genetic engineering to breed people with supercomputer brains.
I’m wondering if it’s also going to be a pattern in marketing. We’ve seen a few clients tell us that we’re not needed any more. That ChatGPT has replaced us. That the AI will write all their marketing.
Then there’s an uprising in which the robot brain does to the client’s briefs what a Sardaukar lasgun does when it hits a Holtzman shield (it go boom) and then they come back to us duly chastised and singed, asking for help.
Because with too many businesses, as with all these sci-fi universes, people give AI too much power, too much responsibility. And inevitably it all goes awry, to the point we have to get by without so much as a pocket calculator.
Maybe we’d all be better served if we treated AI in marketing the same way as they do with Mr Data on Star Trek. Make it a partner, give it a pet cat, and let it crunch the numbers while feeling, thinking, sentient beings focus on the emotions.
Work with the computers instead of making them become our robot butlers, and there’ll be no need for any type of techno-jihad at all.
Something mint - this bit of 1930s nonsense
How do you sell a boring B2B product? Well, you find the most exciting possible benefit. Doesn’t matter if it’s a printer cartridge, or an ergonomic chair, or some sort of pen.
You need a big heroic benefit. But far too many businesses in the B2B arena are a little too shy, a little too reluctant, a little too wary of great big claims.
ScotTissue weren’t. Back in a time when businesses had balls, they gave your business a huge benefit. Buy their paper towels, and you’ll be safe and secure. Don’t, and you’ll be overthrown by violent revolutionaries, put against the wall and shot as the state takes ownership of the means of production.
It’s why we’ve used headlines about saving millions of lives for clients who make dust monitors. It’s why my chat yesterday with a fire suppression company was about stopping chefs’ dreams going up in smoke. Big, bold, emotional statements work.
No AI would ever come up with tissue paper as the solution to global Communism. Which is why humans are here to stay.
Irregular feature - some other things I’ve read this week that might pique your interest
Three posts that’ve stuck with me over the past little while. Not because I agree with every word, but because they’re thought-provoking and written by actual humans.
This post a friend of mine from 6th form wrote for International Women’s Day:
That nice boy Glenn Fisher recommending some good books and talking about the joy of a curated bookshelf (bet he’s not typing in front of 30 collected editions of Judge Dredd):
That nasty boy the Copyranter following the numbers when it comes to bullshit media impressions metrics:
Or in being given image prompts like “giant worm fighting a robot in the desert”
Thanks for the mention, Natman. You’re a good man. But you’re a lazy lover.