As AI becomes integral to our lives, fostering positive human-machine relationships is crucial
Trust between people and machines is essential for the success of agencies, brands, and businesses in our digital world. By prioritising intersubjectivity, promoting human-machine trust, and encouraging collaboration, we can navigate AI’s challenges and opportunities and create a more responsible and ethical approach to AI-driven advertising that enhances human-machine relationships.
AI has the potential to amplify trust between humans and machines. In a world where technology plays an increasingly significant role as a mediator in our daily decisions and experiences, agencies must work to establish and maintain trust between humans and the technology serving us.
At the core of human-machine trust is the concept of intersubjectivity, which refers to a shared understanding of reality among two or more people. In the advertising industry, we can use this framework to develop ways for people and AI systems to communicate effectively and provide a shared understanding of each other’s perspectives. By making machines understand humans better and asking them to help us create experiences we like, we foster relational learning that helps humans and technology work better together.
Agencies must foster deeper connections among machines, people, and brands to achieve mass personalisation, an important goal for AI-driven advertising systems that personalise content and analyse audience behaviour while generating targeted communications. Re-framing a brand’s AI activities as ‘experiential marketing‘ can result in highly personalised, emotionally charged, and more relevant experiences. As AI systems evolve to understand human emotions and context, experiential marketing tactics can help build deeper connections promoting trust and understanding.
However, over-personalizing advertising experiences with AI can lead to filter bubbles, a kind of algorithmic bias that restricts the information a person receives, creating a situation where only content corresponding to their beliefs and preferences appears. Brands and agencies must balance personalisation with exposure to diverse perspectives to avoid being stuck in echo chambers. Collaboration and open dialogue are vital in establishing a more responsible and ethical approach to AI-driven advertising that tackles filter bubbles. Brands and agency practitioners must prioritise audience privacy and autonomy in AI-driven marketing strategies while actively combating the detrimental effects of filter bubbles.
To achieve the greater goal of AI general intersubjectivity, it is important to encourage collaboration and build a community dedicated to addressing ethical issues and the challenges that filter bubbles present. Agencies, brands, and marketers must work together to navigate AI’s challenges and opportunities. This creates a more responsible and ethical approach to AI-driven advertising through transparency, collaboration, and a shared commitment.
The future of advertising includes AI-powered technological intermediaries helping to generate personalised and emotionally captivating customer experiences. By ensuring machines understand people and do the right things, we can bring a brand’s audience closer to what matters to them and enhance their journey.
Our industry must promote human-machine trust and help to cultivate intersubjectivity.
Marketers, advertisers, and brands should tackle ethical issues, balance tailored content and exposure to fresh concepts, and encourage open communication to enhance the bond between humans and machines. These actions will help to maintain a human-driven and human-centred engagement to make today’s experiences enjoyable, relevant, and ethically promising.
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