“AI, at least right now, is really adept at iteration, but not so adept at innovation. So I think it’s really good at augmenting the creative process, yeah, inspiring, but not necessarily great at coming up with something with all the nuances that, again, at a subconscious level, we might pick up on.” -- Steve Keller

This episode is the second half of my conversation with audio researcher, creative consultant, and Sonic Strategy Director for SXM Media Steve Keller, as we talk about how algorithmic data is revolutionizing research, how the pandemic changed the way we relate to music and sound, and what we can learn from the movie Top Gun about the relationship between humans and AI.

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(0:00:00) – AI Benefits in Marketing Creativity

Our discussion picks up with a look at Steve’s work with the Journal of Psychology and Marketing and how AI-driven data is transforming the way we gather research data. “We’ve seen some results,” he explains, “where we’ve gotten really close to AI duplicating the results that we would get from a human panel.” We talk about one client’s clever strategy for using AI to decide what not to do, and we discuss what the latest developments in machine learning have in common with audio breakthroughs like vinyl records and MP3 files. “We have ways of researching to get to the answers,” Steve explains, “but you always have to start with the question, and I think sometimes we ask the wrong question.”

(0:09:36) – The Power of Music During the Pandemic

Since it’s been a few years since my last chat with Steve, we talk about how things have changed in the audio industry since the pandemic, and what the lockdown revealed about our relationship with music. “We would use music,” he says, “not just in terms of nostalgia, to remind us of happier times, but that music became this friend, particularly in lockdown, where it could help us experience the melancholy that was there.” Steve talks about the long-term benefits of adopting AI, and what he learned from a test of human vs. AI marketing. “We found that the real value of this,” he says, “was less about, you know, is AI a collaborator or a competitor, and more about how we manage talent in an age of AI.”

(0:21:43) – The Value of Human-AI Collaboration

We continue our talk about his study on our ability to recognize AI. “Folks were really all over the map in the analysis,” Steve explains. “The individual that we were pitching things to, he wanted to guess who the teams were. He got all of them wrong.” We talk about how that study led to a surprising example of an AI prompting humans for output, and he shares what he calls Maverick’s Maxim, named after the famous character from Top Gun. “[Maverick] said ’it’s not the plane, it’s the pilot,’” Steve tells us, “and so I think this speaks to the importance of humans being in the loop.”

Episode Summary

• Steve’s work with AI-driven research and unconventional uses for machine learning.
• How the pandemic, YouTube, and TikTok have changed the shape of music.
• What a human vs computer marketing test revealed about the emerging role of AI.

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