Never mind the 'attention economy', we live in the 'addiction economy' - and it's going to be AI-enabled unless action is taken
AI inevitably dominates this week’s advertising and marketing jamboree in the South of France, Cannes Lions, coming as it does at a time whensocial media companies are being found guilty in the US of. . .
AI inevitably dominates this week’s advertising and marketing jamboree in the South of France, Cannes Lions, coming as it does at a time whensocial media companies are being found guilty in the US of deliberating monetizing addiction-by-design, whilein Europe and beyond governments are moving to ban the use of such platforms by the under-16s. This is, suggests Jake Dubbins of The Conscious Advertising Network, a business model that is “ultimately broken” - and what’s true of social media today is also coming for AI. At Cannes this week, he is joined by many others who concur with that worldview. Rupen Dessai, CMO of Swiss-based VC firm Una Terra, has a colorful analogy for the current status quo - we’re all living in a version of The Truman Show, the Jim Carrey movie about a man living out his life as the unwitting star of a global reality show:The well-being of all of us, the well-being of the many, is at serious risk. The difference is Jim Carrey didn't know it was all created. We're all responsible, whether you're a marketer, whether you're an advertising professional, whether you're a creator, you're the chosen one who came to south of France in the sweltering heat, but The Truman Show we are all propounding has serious implications for overall well-being. He also makes the point that while terms like ‘attention economy’ are bandied around at such gatherings, the reality is that what lies at the center of this debate is how to manage a bunch of business platforms:Let's remember they are advertising platforms. . . What does that mean? Every click is inventory, every additional click created by hate speech, misinformation, disinformation, click bait is additional inventory, and the inventory gets me your advertising business, so you have very little reason to genuinely move all of that toxic stuff away. I think we need to all accept that we are no longer in the ‘attention economy’, we are actually in the ‘addiction economy’. Unwilling to changeDessai argues that there is some wilful blindness going on out there:Most marketeers are operating in FUFO - fear of finding out. The more I find out, the more I need to address, but what they're not realizing is every part of misinformation, disinformation, hate speech, clickbait, opaque ad spend that is invested is actually affecting the fan, so this is no longer a moral case. That’s a view that will chime with Ian Russell, Chair of The Molly Rose Foundation, a man who has no doubt that Instagram helped to kill his daughter by cutting her off from the offline world, ultimately, leading to her death. He’s now an active campaigner for reform and regulation for social media firms, but seeing no sign of willingness on that front:The platforms have clearly shown they will never change for good unless we compel them. In fact, last year Mark Zuckerberg said changes at Meta would mean they're going to catch less bad stuff, a testament to heading in the wrong direction…It took almost five years to complete Molly's inquest, and even with the delayed and incomplete submissions from Meta, the senior coroner was able to conclude that online content contributed to Molly's death in a more than minimal way, a global first. Despite this finding, appallingly, nearly nine years after Molly died, nothing much has changed. He adds that Molly Rose Foundation research shows that the kind of content that Molly saw is still readily available online:Shockingly, the platform's algorithms are still recommending further harmful content to their young and vulnerable users. Together with other organizations, we've looked at Instagram's teen account safety features, as they're called, and we found that only 17% offer the claimed protections. Most importantly, Molly Rose Foundation talks to children who tell us they encounter harm online weekly, if not daily. None of this is acceptable. “Toxic tech”canbe managed if there is a will, he insists:Online harms must be tackled at source, and most importantly, the platforms must not be allowed to algorithmically amplify them, and that includes addictive design features. . . Let’s not forget that harmful tech is not inevitable. What is inevitable is we will have to go beyond imperfect blanket bans if we're really to make a meaningful difference. United actionThere are attempts being made to lay down global guidelines to improve the situation. Charlotte Scaddan is Senior Adviser on Information Integrity at the United Nations. She warns that the impact of online mis-information and abuse is impacting on every area of the organization’s work:I travel around the world to many far-flung places and have colleagues in every country, and I hear the same challenges from them over and over, and they are contending with dis-information and mis-information, hate speech, polarizing echo chambers, the demise of independent quality media, and now, of course, they're grappling with the risks around emerging tech, including AI. The UN has come up with its Global Principles for Information Integrity:These principles are a series of recommendations. Basically, they are aimed at governments, of course, they are aimed at tech companies, if they'll listen, they are aimed at media, civil society. But one of the key groups in these principles are advertisers and the ad industry, because we realized quite quickly when we set about this journey to make a healthier information ecosystem that we needed to look to those who have power and who can actually affect change. It became very clear to us that the advertising community has just that, so you know, we talk a lot about healthy incentives and transparency. Really, what we're trying to get at is an information ecosystem where reliable information is accessible to all, so that people can make informed decisions and engage meaningfully in public life and exercise their rights. What’s needed is a ‘coalition of the willing here, she says:This is not a blame game. This is about us all supporting and helping each other. We feel that we have a window of opportunity right now with AI before the opacity that we see in the digital world right now gets baked in. As for AI. . . Scaddan makes an important point - where social media has gone before, AI will almost certainly follow. Andas Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff pointed out at the World Economic Forum gathering in Davos in January:These US tech companies, they hate regulation. . . They hate regulation. For his part, Dessai insists:We're not AI haters; we are AI haters being in the hand of a few pre-dominantly white men in one geography in the world. Just as much as AI has the power to make good accelerated, AI will make our lives as Marketeers probably worse, because we will create more garbage, we will create more clutter, we will create more synthetic supply, and we will live a land where it's going to be garbage in and garbage out. As a result, Dessai has a rallying call-to-action for the Marketing community - weaponize your spending power for good:As an advertising person, as an agency person, as a media person, each one of us has a superpower. Somehow we seem to have left that superpower to the advertising platforms - I refuse to call them tech platforms! - A better dollar spent, a more transparent dollar spent, a right dollar spent with the right material behind it, supporting the right journalism, is actually more effectiveness for Marketing, not less. Just as much as there is a moral case - we’re all parents, uncles, we all have nieces and nephews, and we need to do the right thing - the question for us is, ‘Are we going to use our superpower to not create another Truman show? Ten years ago we missed governance on social media, and all Marketers have been chasing it for the last 10 years in the hope, and hope is not a great word, that we can encourage them to be better. My takeI am petrified at what I, as a Marketer, am enabling, because if they are advertising platforms, the real power is not with the marketers, as we'd like to believe. Dessai’s words chill the blood. There has to be a better way, surely?Maybe there is - and we’ll pick that up next.