By Allen Kopelman
Nationwide Payment Systems Inc
Remember the original Terminator movie, released in 1984, where the good guy, John Connor, traveled back 45 years from 2029? That's only five years from now, 2024, a year when AI is all over the news. But let's get real about this – Skynet is not trying to wipe us out, at least, not yet.
It's time to separate the facts from the hype about AI. Yes, artificial intelligence is teaching itself and learning much faster than anyone could have predicted. No, it's not going to overtake our businesses and lives for the foreseeable future. I mean, there could be some issues 100 years from now, but at least we won't have to deal with them.
Here's what I know about AI. It's a useful tool, and if you haven't tapped it, what are you waiting for? There are free programs that can help you drive efficiencies by automating mundane tasks and gain valuable insights about your customers and business. For example, AIs are great at aggregating data. You can ask them questions, and they will come up with fast answers based on information they gather from the internet.
I recently spoke with someone who owns an automation company that uses AI to create buyer personas for A/B testing. He tells the AI to create distinct personalities that represent customers he is trying to reach. Let's say he is targeting Gen X and baby boomer customers. He wants to reach both segments through targeted campaigns that are more effective than door-to-door sales or inbound telemarketing. With these personas, based on known customer preferences and behaviors, his marketing team can nail their messaging.
In today's dynamic market, businesses that want to attract younger people can't afford to be stuck in the 40-and-above demographic and limit themselves to that one buying experience. Businesses need new tools, technology and messaging to broadly appeal to more customers. They can begin by thinking about their ideal clients and then plugging that data right into ChatGPT. Minutes later, the AI will spit out a pretty decent buyer persona, just like that.
Once you have the buyer persona, you then have to figure out how to automate the buying process. Let's say you have a store and an ecommerce site where you sell merchandise. You can put AI and automation together to create effective digital marketing campaigns.
You can free up employees by creating an automated marketing program that will manage all kinds of labor-intensive and repetitive tasks, like maintaining email lists, reaching out to customers who have abandoned their shopping carts and answering simple questions through online chat.
AI marketing tools are simple to use and easy to integrate across an entire enterprise, whether that includes a website, mobile app, CRM or other platform. There's been lots of talk lately about customer journey mapping. Guess what? AIs are great at that, as well as idea generation. Are you thinking about what to name a new product? Ask an AI. Need help researching or forecasting a trend? Ask an AI.
AI is a game changer. We should all be using it. Just the other day, I was trying to come up with a new tagline for my podcast. A friend suggested that I ask ChatGPT. He was right. The AI gave me a great list of suggestions. If you haven't logged into open AI or tried chat GBT or gone onto Microsoft and tried out Bard, give it a try. There are numerous plans available, including paid versions with enhanced features.
AI can be a force for good if you know how to harness it. It doesn't have to be a horror show. In The Terminator, computers became augmented with AI and gradually, over time, AIs began thinking for themselves and blocked humans out of the computer system. But back here on earth, I can confidently say that ChatGPT isn't planning to lock you out. In fact, it is doing just the opposite: sitting and patiently waiting for you to ask a question. 
Allen Kopelman, a serial entrepreneur is co-founder and CEO of Nationwide Payment Systems Inc. and host of B2B Vault: The Payment Technology podcast. Email him at allen@npsbank.com nd connect on LinkedIn https://www.linkedin.com/in/allenkopelman/ and Twitter @AllenKopelman.
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