Salesforce VP: In the age of predictive and self-learning tech, marketing is turning into goal-setting

You don't have to go very far in the marketing tech space these days to bump into predictive technology that scores future customers, system intelligence that puts unnoticed pieces of data together or machine learning that recognizes useful patterns in piles of data. More and more, smart marketing tools are generating insights, assisting with or making decisions, and even taking actions. But this calls into question what the field is about. Since the first time someone stimulated interest in a new product, marketers have assembled information and made choices about ways to get the word out about their products, increase the number of customers, generate customer loyalty and boost sales. So it's not out of bounds to ask: what is the marketer's role when increasingly self-reliant and autonomous intelligent software does those things?