You Can’t Automate Trust

This year we’ve been thinking a whole lot about trust (and, yes, we were thinking about it well before Facebook blew it up). With two interesting trust-related announcements hitting from YouTube and Amazon, this week has been no exception:

Amazon’s latest offer? Your packages delivered right to your car.  Have we even had time to recover yet from Amazon’s offer to enter our homes?!?

Hmm… Given recent apprehensions around the behemoth data collectors in our lives, you might think the idea of happily handing Amazon the keys to your whip would be ludicrous. So, why isn’t it?

Why are we pretending not to hear when people warn us about Amazon? And why are we crucifying Zuck when Google gathers far more personal data on us?

It all comes down to trust. Trust is built through actions. And Amazon consistently delivers help and convenience exactly when, where and how we need it. So much so, that it feels like a highly efficient, highly intuitive, highly valued human.

In the quest to maintain trust, it is critical for brands to realize their main asset is to be human.

Also this week, YouTube Kids, which has been criticized for recommending disturbing and violent videos to the pre- and elementary-school aged kiddos it targets, announced it is (finally) giving parents ways to limit what their kids can watch.

The company may be the most high-profile one yet to fall victim to “artificial intelligence gone wrong,” pointing to inadequate human oversight of its algorithms and automation as an explanation for the mishaps.

In addition to igniting trust issues around how the company uses children’s data to serve them organic and paid content, YouTube Kids’ ordeal exposes the potential pitfalls of the oft-glorified realm of AI.

It’s a reminder that effectively using AI involves navigating the rise of data, the expectations people have around personalization and remaining human in the process.

For more on this topic, watch our Padilla POV webcast, AI: You Can’t Automate Trust. 

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