Magic Numbers Revisited: Hoàng Nguyễn on the Future of Human Intelligence in the Age of AI
Hoàng Nguyễn is Chief Data and Technology Officer at Howatson+Company. Born in Vietnam, Hoàng started programming at the age of six. At 12-years-old, he was recognised by Vietnam’s Guinness Record as the youngest person to have received a professional certification from Microsoft, a software patent at the age of 14 from the World Intellectual Property Organisation (a specialised agency of the United Nations).
Hoàng has competed in and won over ten national and international Information and Communications Technology awards in Vietnam, Singapore, Thailand, Korea, Japan and Switzerland. During his time leading technology teams at several agencies, Hoang designed architectures for several blue-chip enterprises such as NAB and ANZ, Samsung, Telstra, and many financial and technology startups. Hoang is certified and awarded by many technology vendors such as Microsoft, Amazon, and Adobe.
At Howatson+Company, Hoàng leads and expands the technology offering especially in the areas of AI, analytics, data modelling, privacy, security, platform engineering and product development.
LBB> We last spoke about this topic more than two years ago. At the time you said something unexpected – that you don’t believe data shouldn’t drive creativity. Do you still believe that?
Hoàng> I do. I strongly believe that data should support creativity, but it shouldn’t drive it. It’s even more the case now, as we’ve entered into this era of AI – it’s even more crucial that we give expression to the human truths that go beyond data.
LBB> So speaking of AI, how do you see AI fitting into this landscape in 2024?
Hoàng> Well, I think a lot of people are looking at it in the wrong way. They’re trying to get AI to replace the creative process – either trying to, or worrying about that happening. But that’s not where the opportunity is. The opportunity is to use AI to accelerate the creative process, and free up creators from the grunt work so they can work on higher-level thinking.
LBB> Do we need to be nervous, though, about AI replacing this higher-level creative thinking? Certainly some artists and agencies are.
Hoàng> Well, it depends what you mean by creativity. A lot of the ‘creative’ work agencies do is not actually that creative. Like for example, doing a roll-out of 200+ different sizes of an asset in a campaign – it’s very important, but it’s time consuming. What we can do is use AI to free up time and resources so that everyone has a bit more time to think about the actual creative idea.
LBB> Do you see this changing though, as AI develops? Will AI be able to actually do the higher-level thinking at some stage?
Hoàng> The future application of AI is obviously a very complex topic, but when we look at AI in its current form, it doesn’t create anything original. It’s like a super brain that smashes together all of the existing data it can access in order to generate a new mixture – but it’s still just a remix. We still need a human to elevate that, to actually create something new. And the other thing it can’t get at the moment is empathy. It can copy emotions artificially, but it can’t relate. That requires a human.
LBB> So should agencies be at all concerned about AI disrupting their business model, then?
Hoàng> They should be concerned, but maybe not in the way we expect. They should be concerned because the traditional model is based on an hourly rate, which means head hours. AI does threaten that, because it can accelerate that process through automation. So we need to rethink how agencies charge for the value they create.
LBB> What’s your approach to this at Howatson+Company?
Hoàng> Well, we’ve been looking at a way to ensure it’s a win-win situation for us as an agency, and for our clients. The key is to optimise the cost from our clients’ point of view, but also retain our compensation for the effort and value we bring to the table.
LBB> And what about clients? What are their concerns about right now?
Hoàng> For clients, I think that there's now a level of awareness that in order for you to have a successful AI application, either provided from their agency or housed within the brand itself, you need data to drive that. A lot of clients have questions about that; they’re asking, ‘how we can get and organise our data and draw insight from it?’
LBB> So what do you say to them?
Hoàng> I think a business’s owned, unique data is always the first step – without data, how can your brand have any competitive advantages over another brand that is also using, for example ChatGPT or MidJourney or Dali? What gives you the competitive advantage is actually your data, not the AI itself. It's all of the best campaigns that you have executed, all of the best strategies you’ve created, all the business cases you’ve devised. These are the things that your competitor could never get their hands on. You use that as the starting point, and use the data to train up your own AI model.
LBB> When it comes to brands’ use of consumer data, there are obviously privacy concerns and that has been in the news a lot recently. How does this factor in?
Hoàng> Yes, there’s a tension between the potential that data offers and fears around misuse of it, and that’s tricky for brands to navigate. It’s the question of how to get the compliance, you know, regulatory risk, IP security sorted. The solution here is that when a brand trains their own AI model, you know exactly what data goes into that. You can reduce the risk by avoiding data of an unknown origin.
LBB> What’s a use of data you’re proud of at Howatson+Company?
Hoàng> Our Petwatch project for Petbarn and Greencross Vets has been a stand-out. Number one, of course, was the idea – making the otherwise invisible parasite threat visible. Because we know that pet owners are more motivated to take preventative measures like regular flea, tick and worm treatments when the threat is tangible.
The second thing was that only Petbarn could have executed this, because only Petbarn had the right type of owned data, from their Greencross Vet network. We had data for when people brought in their pets to Greencross for treatment, and we combined it with data for weather and humidity conditions at the time, data for each location’s proximity to green space, ABS data about people travelling – we could correlate the data and automatically recognise patterns to predict where parasites would be present next.
AI played a big role in this pattern recognition, and ensuring the results were accurate. But of course, the insight and idea were human breakthroughs.
LBB> Finally, where do you see the industry heading, when it comes to data and AI?
Hoàng> Well, I’ve got four predictions to make. The first is that a new business model will emerge, even a marketplace, for creatives to sell their work to help brands train data models.
The second thing on the horizon? I think one of the major AI players will be caught and fined to the tune of $1B for training on data or content not originally authorised for training.
Third, I can see that every agency will start building their own in-house strategy brain model, based on all of their previously best work.
Finally, data will be a subject taught in high school in Australia.
