Mastering AI for Real-world Results

This Week

• A Marketer’s Guide to LLMs

• The #1 Key to Better AI Outputs

• Unicorn Growth on the Rise

• The Top 100 GenAI Apps

• Marketing Data Cloud Forum | Virtual Event

A Marketers Guide to LLMs

The rise of large language models (LLMs) like ChatGPT and Claude marks a seismic shift in the marketing landscape. These powerful and human-like models can understand and generate text, solve problems, analyze images, surf the Internet, generate images and videos, and even serenade us with sonnets.

But are you ready to harness this power?

For many marketers, LLMs remain shrouded in mystery. What exactly are they, and how do you use them? What could possibly go wrong?

The answer lies in understanding how they work — which is mostly in weird and wonderful ways.

Continue reading at Medium.

The #1 Key to Getting Better AI Outputs

AI has an uncanny knack for tackling tasks we often consider uniquely human: crafting prose, brainstorming ideas, and even mimicking empathy. But its imperfections — conjuring facts out of thin air, confidently asserting inaccuracies, and sometimes phoning it in — feel more like human foibles than robotic glitches.

According to Ethan Mollick, a University professor and AI expert, this quasi-human quirkiness is precisely why managers and teachers tend to be the most adept AI wranglers. They intuitively grasp others' viewpoints and can course-correct when things go wrong.

Treating AI like a sentient being also aligns with two of the best prompting strategies. First, give your AI a distinct persona, clearly defining its identity and the outcome you want. Second is chain-of-thought prompting, where you ask the AI to “think step by step” or provide clear instructions to follow. 

For marketers looking to leverage AI's strengths (while side-stepping its foibles), take a page from the manager's playbook. Define your AI's role  — perhaps a brainstorming colleague or social media manager. The more specific the persona, the better the outputs.

Then, put on your teacher hat. Provide step-by-step prompts and give constructive feedback when your AI veers off course. As Mollick says, treat your AI like a brilliant but quirky intern who occasionally needs a nudge in the right direction.

With this approach, you'll build a collaborative relationship that plays to the strengths of both humans and machines. The result? Marketing magic that's greater than the sum of its parts.

Read the full article on Ethan Mollick’s Blog.

Unicorn Growth on the Rise

Investors and startups are optimistic about growth this year. 

According to CB Insights, new unicorn births rebounded in Q4 ’23, jumping quarter-over-quarter from 14 to 23. Much of this growth was driven by generative AI companies, which are showing they can attain unicorn status at a breakneck pace. 

Collectively, the world’s unicorns are worth $3.8T—roughly comparable to Germany's GDP. Enterprise tech is the most highly represented industry, with 31% of all unicorns. This category includes tech companies that target general B2B use cases.

Roughly half of the unicorns born in the last six months are in this category, propelled by generative AI newcomers like China’s 01.AI ($1B valuation), India’s Krutrim ($1B), and ElevenLabs ($1.1B) out of the US. All three were founded in the last two years.

For all the unicorn stats, visit CB Insights.

The Top 100 GenAI Apps

Since ChatGPT catapulted generative AI into public consciousness over a year ago, we’ve been introduced to thousands of new tools that incorporate AI — from video generators and workflow hacks to creativity tools and virtual companions. 

While a few early winners—namely, ChatGPT and Midjourney—captured widespread attention, new AI-native companies are emerging every month.

Andreessen Horowitz has ranked the top 100 AI-first products and found that:

• 22 of the apps are new compared to six months ago

• Music and productivity apps are the two newest categories of apps

• AI companion apps are growing

For the full list of web and mobile app, visit Andreessen Horowitz.

Marketing Data Cloud Forum | Virtual Event

Virtual Event  |  April 9

9:30 AM PT / 12:30 PM ET

Snowflake’s virtual event promises to help you eliminate silos, simplify your data foundation, modernize marketing execution, and learn from leaders forging the future of privacy-first marketing. 

I’m sure there will be a lot of Snowflake show-and-tell, but if you need to brush up on your data and AI knowledge, this is a good place to start. You’ll hear from marketing leaders from Twilio, Canva, Salesforce, Microsoft, Braze, and Snowflake (of course).

Register for the free Snowflake event here.