AI & Marketing: Crash Course Learning

How do we stay ahead of the tidal wave?

I feel a constant urgency to be deeper and more knowledgeable in AI, as do most of the tech leaders I know. My clients are building strategies around:

• Education and learning

• Tech stack, legal, and governance

• Experimentation

• Scaling

But these buckets are each a Pandora’s box. So I’ve been bingeing across Twitter, LinkedIn, YouTube, Podcasts, and Events to keep pace with the changing landscape.

Events

I’ve just cleared my calendar to attend the AI Institute’s AI for Writer’s Summit NEXT WEDNESDAY, March 6th, since I love Paul Roetzer’s content. Learn more and register here. (I am in no way involved or compensated, just personally attending.)

I also always enjoy SaaStr’s content and have just signed up for their more generalized AI Day

Podcasts & Platforms

While I’ve consumed many podcasts on this firehose of learning, it’s just the beginning. I learned that even though I drifted away from X (Twitter) over the years (for its poorer DG performance and overly political bent), I need to be there. That’s where all the AI leaders are, where the AI news breaks and is analyzed. I’m building who I follow to cover all the best and brightest (Open to recommendations!). More to come here as I feel more confident in my list. (I was happy, however, that I was already following Andrej Karpathy, a famous AI researcher from Tesla and OpenAI who was featured in the news last week for abruptly leaving OpenAI.) (And, of course, you have to follow Sam Altman)

I’ve subscribed to half a dozen podcasts, but have found myself coming back to:

• The Artificial Intelligence Show by the Marketing AI Institute. (I hosted founder Paul Roetzer on a session at G2 Reach in December, “Mastering AI in Marketing” (watch the replay here)

• Possible Podcast by Reid Hoffman - I’ve enjoyed this philosophical exploration of AI’s possibilities in different fields and the future, especially healthcare, though it’s less practically helpful for me and my job

• All In Podcast - Four startup CEOs / VCs break down the week's news across politics, economics, and tech. I find these a bit long and bro-ish, but I enjoy their analysis of things like the NVIDIA earnings announcement last week and ramifications across tech AI. They have a good mix of perspectives on different aspects of the tech and AI landscape (though I wish they had a great woman friend and leader on the show).

LinkedIn

As I mentioned, AI influencers are all on X. Andrej Kaarpathy, mentioned above, has 937,700 followers on X but 281 LinkedIn connections and hasn’t updated his work history since July of 2022. I do, however, follow the following folks on LinkedIn for insights related to AI and Marketing

• Paul Roetzer and his team at The Marketing AI Institute

• Liza Adams, former CMO, and AI advocate - She’s hosting Applied AI: Real Life Product Marketing Use Cases 🗓️ Wednesday, March 13, 2024, 🕒 9 am - 10am PT

• Nicole Leffer - AI Marketing educator - She’s hosting session next week too "What Marketing Leaders Need To Understand About How AI is Evolving - Multimodal AI, GPTs, & AI Automation" next Friday, March 8th, 2024 at 1pm Eastern / 10am Pacific.✨

• Vendors - May Habib, Writer CEO, and Jasper, Adobe

Groups

I’ve tried almost all of the CMO groups for differnt size companies. The in-person networking events with CMOs at your revenue scale or greater are best. Sometimes those are small audiences hand-picked by an influential vendor.

I’m headed to the Pavilion CMO Summit in New York on April 18th. I like Paul Roetzer’s content so much (can you tell?), I’m hosting him at the event again to cover what CMOs need to know about AI, along with two insightful CMOs:

But I also really like the frequency and depth offered by 6Sense’s CMO Coffee Talk where we cover AI frequently, among many other topics.

Books

AI is moving so fast, I’ve over-rotated on digital learning instead of books. I am halfway through Life 3.0, Being Human in the Age of Artificial Intelligence, which a VC friend recommended to me. It's by an MIT professor and has a semi-fictional representation of what the future could be like with AI. Entertaining but scary.

On my “consideration” backlog is the book Reid Hoffman wrote early last year: Impromptu: Amplifying Our Humanity Through AI. He was an early investor and board member in ChatGPT and is in the middle of it all. In fact, he used ChatGPT to write the book. It could be interesting, but I felt like I might be getting his recent thoughts through the podcast mentioned above for the same calories.

Broader AI

There are dozens of conferences, newsletters, webinars, etc I’ve been digging through

So much to learn, so little time. Who else are you following for marketing-specific insights about AI?