ECA News Compass #28: Launching the Retail Trust Index 2024 at Soho House London with BBC's Stephanie Hare
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Week: 14-21 May
ECA updates: This week’s highlights 📌
Is your brand among the most-trusted, privacy-first retail brands in the UK? 🤔
Join us at Soho House on June 19th for an exclusive afterwork cocktail event for the launch of ECA’s Retail Trust Index 2024 presented by BBC 'AI Decoded' star Stephanie Hare!
👉 Save your spot now here: https://www.ethicalalliance.co/rti/london2024
More information 👇https://www.linkedin.com/feed/update/urn:li:activity:7198213288717885440/
AI’s Trust Problem
“As AI becomes more powerful, it faces a major trust problem. Consider 12 leading concerns: disinformation, safety and security, the black box problem, ethical concerns, bias, instability, hallucinations in LLMs, unknown unknowns, potential job losses and social inequalities, environmental impact, industry concentration, and state overreach.”
Privacy & Data Ethics 🔒
Ad tech vendor Colossus faces scrutiny for alleged mismanaging IDs
Colossus faces serious allegations of misleading advertisers by mislabeling user IDs, causing them to target unintended audiences, resulting in ineffective ad targeting, repeated ads, and disrupted conversion tracking.
https://digiday.com/marketing/ad-tech-vendor-colossus-faces-scrutiny-for-alleged-mismanaging-ids/
Washington My Health My Data Act Now in Effect: Key Considerations for the Digital Advertising Industry
Effective since this of April (and June 30th for small businesses) in Washington, it comes as the first privacy regulation that enforces Opt-out by default for marketing purposes.
“While the impetus for the legislation was to protect citizens’ data from being used to prosecute those seeking reproductive healthcare services in states where abortion is newly illegal, MHMD is much broader in application. ”
This week's Walk In the Park:
People in retail react differently to privacy.
Most of them relate it to regulation and data protection, the boring (yet much needed) stuff.
Privacy goes way beyond.
Privacy is directly relatable to Growth, Trust and Customer Happiness.
https://www.linkedin.com/feed/update/urn:li:activity:7198560445463445504/
Trustworthy AI & Customer Empowerment 🎯
Examples That Illustrate Why Transparency Is Crucial In AI
Successful examples of transparent AI include: Adobe's Firefly, which openly discloses the data used to train its models, Salesforce's practice of highlighting AI-generated uncertainties, Microsoft's Python SDK for Azure Machine Learning that provides model explainability by default, and Cognizant's recommendation for centralising AI oversight to maintain transparency across projects.
Safety of advanced AI under the spotlight in first ever independent, international scientific report
An analysis of the risks and benefits of general-purpose AI, emphasising the need for improved understanding and international collaboration:
Further reading on this topic:
- What are the main differences between AI and AGI?
- Google I/O wrap-up: Gemini AI updates, new search features and moreEthics in Commerce 🛍️
Ethical e-commerce: Balancing AI advancements with sustainability in fashion retail
This shift towards ethical eCommerce involves balancing technological advances with environmental and social responsibility.
Personalised shopping experiences, efficient inventory management, and supply chain transparency, predicting trends accurately, managing inventory, and offering customisation, are just some examples of this initiative.
Further reading on this topic:
- What’s Next For Sustainable Fashion?:Sustainability is crucial for the fashion industry, one multi-year study found that leading sustainable companies enjoyed annual profits about 50% higher than other businesses.
- M&S partners with recycling tech firm to track plastic packaging: Marks and Spencer is partnering with Polytag to track plastic packaging using invisible tags detectable by electronic readers at recycling centres. Polytag's technology will help sort plastics more efficiently and potentially reduce EPR fees for retailers.
- Consumers Say They Will Spend More To Support Neighbourhood Shops
- Motive Market is worth-mentioning, among wonderful initiatives supporting local businesses.
Thank you for reading! 🫶
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Ethically,
The ECA Team