You Ask, I Answer: Ethical Use of AI in Marketing?

In today's episode, Paul asks, what can marketers do to ensure the ethical use of AI in their marketing? Well, that's a big question. We should probably start by defining what we mean by ethics, because ethics itself is a massive field of philosophy and has so many branches and so many interpretations. The interpretation that I fall back on most is what you would call either consequentialism or utilitarian ethics. And what those are is fundamentally consequentialism is trying to do things that result in the fewest negative consequences for you and the largest number of uh positive consequences for you.

Uh, utilitarianism is sort of the idea that uh you try to do the maximum amount of good possible, or the maximum amount of benefit for others, the health of others, the happiness of others, uh, the welfare of others. Sort of uh, you know, to to quote the incredibly cliche business term, uh, a win-win situation. How can you make decisions that maximize the benefit to the maximum number of people? And that's relevant to AI because when we think about how we do marketing, very often we are trying to maximize the benefit of one party only, our company, right? We want to keep our jobs, we want to get a bonus, we want to hit our numbers, and so we make decisions that are a little short-sighted.

We make decisions that are for the benefit of our company, and we don't take the large view of how can we benefit everyone. That how can we benefit everyone perspective is actually what we would call customer-centric marketing, right? How can we create benefit for our customers with the assumption that uh if we do good for others, uh good is returned to us uh in the form of profits and and revenues and such. So let's start with that definition. So, how can we ensure that AI is being used in a way that maximizes good?

Ethics and morals are not things machines understand. Machines have no ethics, they have no morals, they are non-moral devices, right? Fundamentally, uh an AI is still a calculator at its core, right? It's still just doing mathematics. No matter how sophisticated, no matter how fancy, no matter how uh complex it is, it's still a calculator.

And a calculator is a tool. A tool has no ethics, a tool has no morals. It's not that it's immoral and that uh it is inherently bad, it's just a tool. If it if it sits there on the ground with no user, it does nothing, right? You can even say the same thing for things that we typically ascribe to negatives or positives, right?

Uh a firearm, you know, is someone is uh people will ascribe virtues and vices to a gun. Well, if it's on the ground, it does nothing, right? The user is the person who behaves with ethics using that tool, and AI is the same. Because it's a tool, the burden of ethics is on the users of the tools, which means that if we, the the users are unethical or immoral or uh self-centered, then we're going to use those tools to do things that are unethical. So the simplest way to answer Paul's question is if your company, if you, if your manager, uh uh behave unethically today with the data and the systems and the software that you have now, you're gonna do it with AI, right?

You're you're gonna take another tool and use it in the same way that you use your existing tools. Uh if you have a uh you know, a kid and uh and your kid hits their sibling with uh a stuffed animal, you give the kid a book, they're probably gonna hit the kid the uh the sibling with a book, right? That pattern of behavior, who we are as humans, governs what's likely to happen with any given tool. So, how do you ensure the ethical use of AI and your marketing? You should ensure the ethical use of your marketing.

Uh and if you want to avoid sticky situations that border on uh spirituality and religion, just go with utilitarian ethics. Are we doing the most good possible? Are we doing the least harm possible? Are we uh we making the world a better or worse place? And to the extent that you can give more value than you get, uh, you will probably do okay.

So if you're thinking like, how can I uh use targeting and segmentation, you know, uh deep learning networks to identify customers? Well, that's a method, that's a tactic, and it's neither good or bad, but if your product sucks and your service is terrible and your customers hate you, but and they have no other choice, then don't worry about AI, fix your core problems. If you have a manager, a corporate culture, stakeholders, um that behave unethically, the most ethical thing you can do is steer that company away from AI. You know, if you have uh uh a person who uh is uh is violent, don't give them bigger weapons, take their weapons away from them uh and give them like I don't know, uh soft foam blocks to play with. So when you have a company that already behaves unethically, don't pursue AI.

Even if you want to personally for your own career growth and and things, do that on your free time. Do that outside of work. Um but don't give more dangerous things to people who are already dangerous. Uh and consider not working there. If you are the kind of person who wants to grow your career and you want to to also do good in the world, and you're working for a company that doesn't do good in the world, it might be time for a change.

It might be time to to give some thought to uh where else could you apply your talents where they would be appreciated, you would be compensated appropriately, because again, part of utilitarianism is doing good for yourself too. It's just doing good for yourself and everyone else. Um and find another place, a company that can behave more ethically, that can do more good for the world, that can uh invoke fewer negative consequences for its actions. But I can't reiterate enough, at the end of the day, AI is just math, right? And we can use mathematics for good, for evil, uh, we can do good things, we can do horror horrific things to other humans.

So make sure that the core, the heart and the soul of your company is in good shape before you start introducing uh advanced technologies. It's a big question. Uh we see ethical lapses or just companies that are unethical. Uh Facebook comes to mind as one of the biggest examples of a company where uh ethics are secondary to um that sort of self-centered uh utilitarianism. Uh and we could talk for hours about the the newsfeed algorithm, but for now focus on the ethics of your company, determine whether it is appropriate for the company to be pursuing AI, to be using tools that can scale good or bad, and then make a decision.

You know, should we pursue this or should we not, based on uh the ethics of the company overall? Uh good question, tough question, big, big question. Uh, if you have follow up comments, please leave them in the comments box below. Subscribe to the YouTube channel and the newsletter. I'll talk to you soon.

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