What do Mark Zuckerberg, Barack Obama and Katy Perry have in common? They’ve all had starring roles in deepfake videos. Deepfakes which use artificial intelligence (AI) synthesize images and sounds - and they are fueling a growing trend of distrust of digital technology. A steady stream of headline-grabbing stories have contributed to this discontent. And if there is one surefire certainty, it is that there will be more fake news, trolling and privacy concerns in 2020 and beyond.
An increasing number of consumers are already shunning digital technologies. According to the latest Edelman Trust Barometer: Technology report, confidence in the tech sector as a force for good has dropped over the past year among both the general population and tech employees.
Business leaders understand the concern but are struggling to address it. One recent PwC survey of 3,000 corporate executives globally found that few are very confident they have all the right controls in place to adopt emerging technologies safely. For example, 70% of respondents consider AI critical to at least some of their business, but only 31% are very comfortable that they are building sufficient digital trust controls.
Alexa, who can I trust?
Business leaders further understand that consumer trust is hard to gain, easy to lose and incredibly valuable. According to HubSpot, the cost of acquiring a new customer has climbed by more than 50 percent in the last five years, and it is clear that enterprises can gain a significant competitive advantage when they have the trust of their customers. It shapes a company’s ability to create and market digital products and services.
Amazon is a great example of this in action. It has built a foundation of deep trust with its customer base, and dominates the market in sales of digital voice assistants: Amazon accounts for 36 percent of the market, compared to 30 percent for Google and 4 percent for Apple. Interestingly, this holds true even though Google outscored both Apple and Amazon on query tests, with Google answering correctly 88 percent of the time, Apple 75 percent and Amazon 73 percent.
A key factor to Amazon’s success - regardless of whether customers reflect on it deeply - is the sense that the company can be trusted with their data because they’re paid directly to do so. This stands in contrast to competitors like Google and Facebook that depend in large part on a “surveillance” business model and data mining to generate revenue.
Tools for rebuilding trust
Companies that are serious about staying resilient in today’s business climate should mitigate the effects of digital discontent by incorporating rigorous trust and validation processes and technologies, in addition to adhering to regulations, standards and laws. Here are several examples of how companies are successfully doing so to bolster confidence:
Responsible AI: Algorithmic bias and black-box decision tools (e.g., deep learning for computer vision) are hot topics. Companies need to raise the level of rigor to recognize when and where AI bias can occur and take active measures to remedy the situation. There are tools for doing so. For example, Microsoft’s FATE aims to address the need for transparency, accountability and fairness in AI and machine-learning systems. IBM’s AI Fairness 360 is an open-source toolkit of metrics that can be used to check for unwanted bias.
Content anti-tampering: It is impossible to completely defend against fraud and manipulation of content - be it video, transactions or data. However, new content authentication and integrity technology can help raise the level of assurance between businesses and individuals. Amber is a tool that runs in the background on a device and generates hashes of the video stream - cryptographically scrambled representations of the data - that are indelibly recorded on a public blockchain. Users can interrogate the system to understand which parts of a video clip have hashes that match the originals stored on the blockchain and which, if any, don't. The idea is for makers of surveillance products like CCTVs and body cams to license Amber Authenticate and run it on their devices.
Designed for people: Companies are now in the spotlight to appreciate and limit the negative impact of certain technologies on society. Apple’s Screen Time and Google tools are placing more control in the user’s hands to reduce time spent on applications. The example to follow here is taking a step back from “growth at any cost” to placing people’s wellbeing above everything else.
Privacy-focused business models: In some cases, the only way to meet customer expectations is to “do the right thing” and entirely change the status quo. A good example of this is Facebook’s plan to encrypt messaging across its products and allow private conversations to be ephemeral. This is a major shift away from its prevailing public platform and ad-supported business.
The relationship status between technology and society is getting more complex and consequential. Yes, there is a loyal fandom ever-ready to embrace the latest gadgets, but there is also growing angst that consumers need a digital detox. Companies need to deal with these concerns today to avoid more serious and even disastrous consequences in 2020 and beyond.
This article was co-authored by Walid Negm, Group Chief Innovation Officer at Altran, and Tim Morey, Vice President of Global Strategy at frog, a company of Altran. They are contributing authors to Altran’s Technology Vision 2019: Seeking Digital Alpha report, from which this article is adapted.
Timothy Morey is Vice President of Global Strategy at frog, one of the world’s leading design and innovation firms, and a company of Altran. He leads a global team of business and product strategists who work alongside frog designers and technologists to bring game-changing innovations to market. He has worked in Silicon Valley for 20 years in a variety of product, strategy and marketing roles. He holds an MBA from the University of California at Berkeley, Haas School of Business.
