It used to be that popular brands and the companies behind them had all the marketing power. But thanks to e-commerce and user-driven social networks, that power has shifted to the consumer. So how is artificial intelligence bringing a little power balance back between companies and consumers in the age of the customer? And what does this mean for companies?

“We live in the age of the customer, and understanding and anticipating customer needs is paramount to be able to compete,” said Brandon Purcell (pictured, right), principal analyst at Forrester Research Inc. “And so it’s the businesses in the age of AI and the age of the customer that have the data on the customer and enable the ability to distill that into insights that will ultimately succeed.”

Purcell and Caitlin Halferty (pictured, left), client engagement executive, chief data office, at IBM, recently broke down the way AI is transforming customer relationships and the questions being wrestled with over AI, big data and machine learning. The two spoke with Dave Vellante (@dvellante), host of theCUBE, SiliconANGLE Media’s mobile livestreaming studio, at the IBM Chief Data Officer Strategy Summit in San Francisco. They discussed AI, big data, and the ethics and questions surrounding these emerging technologies. (* Disclosure below.)

Analyzation and trust for customers in AI, big data

About 52 percent of businesses globally have implemented AI into their company in some way, and another 20 percent plan to do so within the next 12 months, according to Forrester research. But why is AI so important? Because it helps analyze the big data companies are so excited about.

“If you think about the life cycle of analytics, analytics start their lives as customer data,” Purcell said. “As customers interact and transact with you, that creates a footprint that you then have to analyze to unleash some sort of insight. … Not much value unless you analyze that.”

What AI promises to do, according to Purcell, is to synthesize all of those pieces from data to insights to action. However, with such power of data analyzation comes huge responsibility, as Halferty was quick to note. “So we lead with this thought around trusting your data,” she said. “Your data’s your data. … So you have a sense of confidence that you know how it’s treated, how it’s curated, if it’s used in some third-party fashion — the ability to know that.”

The future will be all about making sure that data isn’t exploited and monetized in unethical ways. “If we break that promise, customers are going to ultimately leave us,” Purcell concluded.

Watch the complete video interview below, and be sure to check out more of SiliconANGLE’s and theCUBE’s coverage of the IBM Chief Data Officer Strategy Summit. (* Disclosure: TheCUBE is a paid media partner for the IBM Chief Data Officer Strategy Summit. Neither IBM, the event sponsor, nor other sponsors have editorial control over content on theCUBE or SiliconANGLE.)

Photo: SiliconANGLE