Black, white or grey magic? Our future with artificial intelligence

ABSTRACT

Are new technologies driving us towards dystopia or utopia – or something in between? Marketers not only have a stake in finding out the answer to this question but also a direct (and indirect) influence on determining the answer. This commentary discusses recent developments in artificial intelligence (AI) and robotics, and how these are influencing marketers, consumers and society by either leading to a dystopian (black magic), utopian (white magic) or ‘dualopian’ future (grey magic). We argue that the net effect is squarely in the grey and that marketers have a unique power to leverage AI and robotics developments for good. The commentary concludes with 24 research questions forming an agenda for future research under three streams: marketing power, understanding the bias and ethics revisited.

KEYWORDS:

• Artificial intelligence
• robotics
• cognitive bias
• ethics
• consumer psychology

Acknowledgments

This paper was completed with the assistance of the Behavioural Economics, Society and Technology (BEST) Centre at the Queensland University of Technology, and the Research and Development Program, QUT Business School, Queensland University of Technology. The authors gratefully acknowledge these contributions, as well as those of the Editorial Team for the Journal of Marketing Management, for their excellent feedback on this commentary.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.