The Bots Are Coming After Your Job: Public Relations In The Age Of Artificial Intelligence
The bots are coming after your job. The threat of the automated workplace has become the increasingly strident hue and cry from workers and trade unions up and down the UK. The spectre of the robot-managed office or shop floor has evolved through rapid advances in Artificial Intelligence (AI), a field of computer science dedicated to solving cognitive problems associated with human intelligence such as learning, problem solving and pattern recognition – and the capacity of machines using algorithms to simulate human behaviour and improve their learning over time by being continuously fed with data and information. Academic research into threatsIn recent years the subject of machines replacing human beings has also become one for attention-grabbing academic research.
In their 2013 study, The Future of Employment: How Susceptible Are Jobs to Computerisation? Dr Michael A Osborne from Oxford University’s Department of Engineering Science and Dr Carl Benedikt Frey of the Oxford Martin School estimated that 47 percent of jobs in the USA were ‘at risk’ of being automated in the next 20 years. Their study looked at over 700 detailed occupation types taking account of the tasks performed by workers and the skills they required. Osborne and Frey found that transportation, logistics, office and administrative support jobs were at ‘high risk’ of automation and that occupations within the service industry were also highly susceptible despite recent job expansion in this sector.
Crucially, their study highlighted that the UK is expected to confront similar problems: “While our analysis was based on detailed datasets relating to US occupations, the implications are likely to extend to employment in the UK and other developed countries”. In the context of the Post 2008 financial crisis in which an estimated 1. 3m people lost their means of livelihood, automation has served to instil further anxiety and suspicion into the minds of manual and skilled workforce across several sectors. Public Relations and TechnologyThe Public Relations (PR) profession and its practitioners are by no means immune to the onward march of technology. The UK PR and communications industry employs 86,000 persons and is valued at £13. 8bn – up 7 per cent since 2016, according to the PRCA Census, published in May 2018. In their book PR Today: The Authoritative Guide to Public Relations, Trevor Morris and Simon Goldsworthy define PR as the planned persuasion of people to behave in ways which further its sponsor’s objectives”. Have we reached the point where the processes by which PR professionals plan and execute persuasive activity (through the qualitative indices of storytelling, ethics, strategy,2stakeholder management, content management and curation) are effectively being replaced by artificial intelligence, machine learning and robots?
The discussion paper, Humans Still Needed: An Analysis of Skills and Tools in Public Relations, authored by Jean Valin and commissioned by the Chartered Institute of Public Relations, audits the skills required to perform tasks in the PR profession and has carried out an evaluation of tasks that will be replaced by AI. The paper effectively examines a profession transitioning into a more scientific age, powered by technology through the agency of AI. Skillsets, tasks and tech The paper, based on the work of Valin’s #AIinPR team, draws on the discoveries of the Global Alliance Global Body of Knowledge (GBOK), which has described over 50 skills and abilities in the vast repertoire of competencies required to practice public relations. The contemporary PR professional is expected to be a competent speaker and writer whose skillset runs the gamut of auditing, forecasting, data management, risk analysis, research, behavioural analysis and ethics. Valin and his team readily acknowledge that skillsets do not necessarily translate into tasks. In order to navigate this challenge, they came up with a 5-point scale to describe the sophistication of the tools employed by PR professionals.
These are:
- Simplification of tasks including technologies that simplify a PR process or provide a tactical service.
- Social listening and monitoring, using platforms such as Brandwatch and Talkwalker.
- Automation of tasks, for instance, using Open Data formats.
- AI for structured data, or machine intelligence applied to structured data; and
- AI for structured data, or machine intelligence applied to structured data.
The CIPR discussion paper deems points 4 and 5 to represent tools that are strongly associated with AI. Interestingly, in the 2018 State of the Profession Survey Report prepared by the CIPR (April 2018), one of the major findings was that public relations needed to ‘counter risks posed by new technology’ and discover new sources of value. The report mentioned that five of the top 11 challenges facing those in the PR profession pertained to the shifting media landscape, changing skill sets and the convergence of tasks and responsibilities.
The Report’s 1. 7k respondents were asked to indicate the activities they commonly undertake in their PR jobs. The ten most common activities were copywriting and editing (73%), PR campaigns (68%), media relations (65%), strategic planning (57%), social media relations (54%), crisis management (52%), community and stakeholder relations (49%), internal comms (48%), events and conferences (44%) and people/resource management (38%). Stephen Waddington, a respected industry commentator and past President of the CIPR, says: “Our business needs to take a cold shower and wake up to automation and artificial intelligence. ”While Valin’s important #AIinPR study believes that AI could support areas currently featuring little or no AI penetration – such as ethical codes, integrity, honesty and trust, they are of the view that these areas are best placed to be under the control of human agency.
Valin says: “Robots operate on strict rules and algorithms; human critical thinking skills will be least impacted by AI. Given the relatively low use or take-up of AI tools in the sub-set of skills (27%) where we see AI tools supporting but not overtaking humans, we surmise that take-up will increase with experience and familiarity. Perhaps this will shift a few more skills from our zero list to a higher level of AI in the future. Bottom line: 59% of the skill set are predominantly not candidates for AI. ” Training and upskilling Key to creating both an awareness of AI in the PR workplace and preparing PR professionals in the new millennium is, of course, training and up-skilling. Surprisingly, while knowledge of algorithms, chatbots, and artificial intelligence is embedded into the internet of things presently in everyday commercial use - from Amazon’s Alexa and online shopping platforms to automated customer relations management (CRM) - services in call-centres and beyond - there appear to be few opportunities or courses (online and/or face to face) which offer specific training in AI for PR and communications professionals in the private and public sectors.
There should be a qualitative difference between today’s public relations professional and his counterpart in 2008, where Web 2. 0 – social media platforms – was still in its infancy. Depending on the sector in which one operates, tools such as Brandwatch (a social media analytical tool which tracks billions of conversations happening online everyday, including blogs, news, forums, videos, twitter, reviews) and Traackr (an online influencer-management platform) are now part of the arsenal of tactical and strategic tools of communications personnel. In order to reduce the threat posed by AI, the communications professional should mandatorily be an integrated communicator, combining the roles of data analyst, content editor, behavioural scientist and stakeholder manager. The ability to extract meaning, value, sentiment, and nuance from large amounts of data through a compelling narrative or collection of narratives is crucial. PR in the age of artificial intelligence requires competent story tellers to match a relentless surfeit of data in both structured and unstructured forms.
The concept of an integrated communicator with the above-mentioned attributes updates the attribute descriptions provided by the Global Alliance GBOK, which in 2016 described two levels of practitioner, namely entry-level and mid-career or senior level. The GBOK entry-level attributes include: Account or client management; strategic planning; public relations programmes; project management; media relations; social media relations; issue management; crisis management; internal or employee communications; special event management; community relations; and stakeholder relations. Mid-career or senior level attributes include: reputation management; government relations and public affairs; evaluation and measurement; values definition and guiding principles; trust building and management; evaluative research; issues identification and advanced environmental scanning and trend identification.
4 Role of the C-Suite
The conscientious efforts of AI-aware communications officers and chief communications officers (CCOs) has to be backed up a corresponding awareness and sense of forward planning from other members of the C-Suite – the chief executive officer, chief financial officer and chief operating officer. The efforts of the entire C-Suite acting in concert to plan for and prepare against the respective rewards or threats of AI will be a welcome development in any business or organisation.
Conclusion
According to the Deputy Director-General of the Public Relations and Communications Association (PRCA), Matt Cartmell: “There are many ways in which PR may be impacted by AI: from simple content writing and personalisation of automated communications, to complex crisis management modelling”. He goes on to say, however, that, “to capitalise on these exciting developments, the PR industry needs to continue in its never-ending diversification of talent by training and recruiting AI specialists of its own. AI can help PR to grow as an industry – as indeed PR has previously used many other tech developments to grow its market share. But to avoid being dismantled by AI, the sector needs to understand and embrace this emerging technology quickly and in great depth. ”While the innovative use of artificial intelligence (and technology more generally) puts wind in the sails of the profession, creative and forward-thinking professionals are more than ever needed to bring the public relations and corporate communications ship into harbour - generating value and revenue for clients and stakeholders in the process.
