Businesses that prioritize and build trust will thrive in Web3: Here’s why

This article is brought to you thanks to the collaboration of The European Sting with the World Economic Forum.

Author: Tiffany Xingyu Wang, Chief Marketing & Trust Officer, OpenWeb

• The era of data-at-all-costs is ending – replaced by a ‘trust transformation’ that’s driven by changing consumer values.
• Businesses must demonstrate their trustworthiness by prioritizing three ethical pillars: privacy, safety and diversity.
• In a world dominated by AI, businesses that treat trust and ethics as strategic drivers will thrive.

Digital transformation has swept across sectors for two decades. Having propelled innovative business-to-business startups, direct-to-consumer pioneers and social media platforms at the dawn of Web2 to the top of their categories, it is giving way to a new wave: “the trust transformation”.

The end of the data-at-all-costs modality

Digital transformation ushered in the adoption of cloud computing, eventually layering in machine learning (ML) and the expansion of the Internet of Things (IoT). This resulted in the mass centralization of data on businesses and people.

This gave rise to the social media behemoths, funded by advertising, who defined and dominated Web2 – the social web. They amassed substantial influence because of the volume of personal data they possessed, allowing them to power the growth of brands. During this time, growth – and speed of growth – outweighed everything.

The major pitfall with digital transformation is that it productized consumers, as privacy, safety and representation were only afterthoughts in its inception and throughout its evolution. As consumers’ attention became the ultimate lever of revenue, businesses prioritized data extraction at any cost. As a result, privacy breaches have become the new normal, misinformation is weaponized for eyeballs, and bias and toxicity dominate online discourse.

These consequences have now swung the pendulum from a data-centric social web to the people-centric semantic web we are entering, with the awakening of new generations demanding respect for their identities and data dignity.

The dawn of the trust transformation

As consumers are awakening to the value they hold – and how they expect to be treated in exchange for that value and their trust – we have seen the sunset of cookies, the introduction of privacy statutes, and a widespread battle with social media around addressing toxicity.

In this new environment, businesses can demonstrate their trustworthiness by prioritizing ethical pillars like privacy, safety, and diversity, both externally and internally, through the following: privacy protections through consent management by design; online safety measures through robust content moderation; and inclusion efforts through diversity by design, from product design to accessibility.

Businesses that respect and preserve their consumers’ identities and data dignity in the new era of Web3, a semantic web powered by artificial intelligence (AI), IoT and immersive technologies, will earn their trust. And when businesses invest in building this robust trust net, they can establish a continuous exchange of information sharing and value between the consumer and the brand.

The emergence of generative AI and its acceleration of the trust transformation

In the past six months, we have witnessed a watershed moment of mass adoption of generative AI. The explosive growth of data since the inception of the semiconductor (followed by the PC, internet, cloud, mobile, social and big data movements) led to this moment. The large corpus of data allows the machine – AI – not only to optimize our life but also to assist us to create.

This computation revolution invited scepticism around its impact on human civilization. We have seen early signs of security loopholes introduced into code, the hastened spread of misinformation and toxicity, and questionable representation due to biased data used for training. These concerns have rallied support for stricter guardrails that prioritize safety and ethics and accelerate the trust transformation.

Tech execs and leading scientists have called for a pause in the technology, saying it shouldn’t be deployed until there’s confidence that its “effects will be positive and their risks will be manageable.” The Biden administration is even considering regulatory oversight of generative AI: “We know that we need to put some guardrails in place to make sure that they are being used responsibly,” said Alan Davidson, Assistant Secretary of Commerce for Communications and Information.

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How is the World Economic Forum ensuring the ethical development of artificial intelligence?

The World Economic Forum’s Centre for the Fourth Industrial Revolution brings together global stakeholders to accelerate the adoption of transparent and inclusive AI, so the technology can be deployed in a safe, ethical and responsible way.

• The Forum created a toolkit for human resources to promote positive and ethical human-centred use of AI for organizations, workers and society.
• From robotic toys and social media to the classroom and home, AI is part of life. By developing AI standards for children, the Forum is creating actionable guidelines to educate, empower and protect children and youth.
• The Forum is bringing together over 100 companies, governments, civil society organizations and academic institutions in the Global AI Action Alliance to accelerate the adoption of responsible AI in the global public interest.
• The Forum’s Empowering AI Leadership: AI C-Suite Toolkit provides practical tools to help companies better understand the ethical and business impact of their AI investment. The Model AI Governance Framework features responsible practices of leading companies from different sectors that organizations can adopt in a similar manner.
• In partnership with the UK government, the Forum created a set of procurement recommendations designed to unlock public-sector adoption of responsible AI.
• The Centre for the Fourth Industrial Revolution Rwanda is promoting the adoption of new technologies in the country, driving innovation on data policy and AI – particularly in healthcare.

Contact us for more information on how to get involved.

The unprecedented speed with which Capitol Hill has mobilized hearings to address the potential risks of generative AI, particularly when compared against the years it took for Congress to take a closer look at social media, reflects an increasing urgency around the need to guide technology with an ethical lens.

This transformational technology holds incredible promise. It’s not the generative AI we should push back on. It’s the development discipline and the use of the technology we should focus on making more ethical. We need to be disciplined from the get-go to ensure diversity of the data used for model training. We need to moderate prompts and results to ensure civility, leverage reinforcement learning with human feedback (RLHF) to de-incentivize inappropriate behaviours and make endeavours for technology accessibility across the global footprint.

As the collective outcry around responsible development and deployment of generative AI illustrates, the trust transformation represents a clear shift in the collective public, corporate and government consciousness. And as this movement takes hold, it will shape the next generation of products, services and experiences. We stand a chance to get it right at the onset this time around.

Time for CEOs and boards to demonstrate a clear commitment to digital trust

CEOs, boards and C-suites all have a role to play in ensuring trust permeates every aspect of the business – from consumer marketing to diverse hiring and security guardrails. The definition of “trust” evolves with our society and as the technological paradigm shifts. It is critical to dedicate a C-suite role, Chief Trust Officer, and a P&L to drive trust transformation for the businesses.

Once an afterthought and a cost centre, trust and ethics are quickly ascending to become a critical profit centre, strategic driver and brand differentiator.

The companies that dominate the corporate landscape today are the ones that succeeded in achieving an accelerated and effective digital transformation. In the same way, the trust transformation will define the winners and losers of the next generation. Companies that will loom largest 15 years from now are the ones that are actively cultivating trust today.