AI Ethics: Behaviour Nudging in Retail

The Montreal AI Ethics Institute and Lightspeed are joining forces to discuss the ethics of artificial intelligence (AI), with a particular focus on behaviour nudging in retail.

Shaping behaviour has always been something that has been practiced in marketing to nudge people towards particular brands and products and induce expenditure. With the advent of AI-enabled techniques, this has taken new meaning via hyper-personalization and tailoring of messages and ads. It is important that we ensure ethical practices in doing so, especially when dealing with vulnerable populations.

This session will take a critical, deep-dive into what this means and will explore this through the following reading material with an objective to produce a short article summarizing the views from our discussions.

NOTE: We have pizza + beer at the event, so make sure to show up on time!!

Guiding questions for the session:

1. What are the top 3 differences in ethical dilemmas that arise because of the use of AI in retail and marketing vs. the more traditional techniques used in influencing customers?

2. What could be 3 ways that customers can highlight concerns and affect changes in the retail and marketing world, pushing for more ethical uses of AI in shaping consumer behaviour?

Mandatory Readings:

1. AI poses ethical dilemmas in retail commerce - https://insideretail.asia/2015/09/11/ai-poses-ethical-dilemmas-in-retail-commerce/

2. Why retail’s artificial intelligence bet is all wrong - https://qz.com/1221180/why-retails-artificial-intelligence-bet-is-all-wrong/

3. Can Artificial Intelligence Drive More Ethical Retail? - https://www.forbes.com/sites/sap/2018/02/05/can-ai-drive-more-ethical-retail-or-is-common-sense-enough/#2c438ab23f71

4. Are ethics compatible with AI? - https://www.retailwire.com/discussion/are-ethics-compatible-with-ai/

5. Retailers: Here’s what you should be asking about AI - https://medium.com/ibmindustrious/retailers-heres-what-you-should-be-asking-about-ai-4f042422abca

6. Machines v humanity: the ethical challenges behind AI - https://www.essentialretail.com/features/machines-v-humanity-ai/

Adventurous Readings:

1. THE ETHICS OF AI IN A PRICE-TRANSPARENT WORLD - https://retailleader.com/ethics-ai-price-transparent-world

2. AI’s role in changing the outlook of the retail industry - https://www.avanade.com/en/blogs/avanade-insights/retail/ai-role-in-changing-the-retail-industry

3. AI RETAIL PLAYBOOK - http://info.microsoft.com/rs/157-GQE-382/images/Final%20AI%20Retail%20Playbook.pdf

NOTE : Please join Slack via http://bit.ly/ai-ethics-signup as we will be actively discussing things there leading up to the session.

Format :

6:00-6:30 Registration and networking

6:30-6:35 Introduction

6:35-6:40 Break out into groups

6:40-7:00 Group discussion

7:00-7:55 Group presentations and debate [3 min. presentation + 4 min cross-questioning by group]

7:55-8:00 Session wrap-up