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The rise of artificial intelligence has been met with reactionary fears of robots taking over. We’ve all seen the movies. What’s left out of this conversation is a more practical threat. We should be concerned that AI will be hijacked, not by rogue computers out to destroy mankind, but by people with ulterior motives.
A basic form of AI already here is called decision support. It helps us make decisions based on our behavior: Recommendation engines suggest just the right items for us to buy, and navigation systems tell us the best way to drive home. As AI advances, it will embed itself even deeper into our social fabric, shaping everything from how we do business to how we receive medical care.
So what happens when AI-powered assistance is so commonplace that we become dependent on it?
Fear of Deciding Alone, aka FODA. When deeply quantified support is readily at hand, we may grow to doubt many of the decisions we make without support. There is an apt parallel in FOMO (fear of missing out), a silly meme with serious underpinnings: Social media has warped our human instinct for recognition from our peers, creating a landscape in which we present the best versions of ourselves. Life looks like one big party, and if we don’t keep up, we miss all the fun. FODA is borne from the same human desire, only in this case we look to machines, not each other, for validation....
FODA (fear of deciding alone) is an interesting artificial intelligence concept and one that has implications for marketing and social marketing. For example, word-of-mouth is one of the most powerful marketing tools available. If you can harness FODA, you have the stuff of science fiction.