Unintended consequences and wild imaginations: a recap from SXSW

Marketers are often the drivers of change but need to consider the unintended consequences when pushing the boundaries, writes WPP’s Katie Rigg-Smith.

Katie Rigg Smith is the chief strategic officer at WPP ANZ

“How you spend your hours is how you spend your life”.

A powerful reminder from Johann Hari who was on the main stage at the innovation conference SXSW talking about “stolen focus, why you can’t pay attention and how to get your brain back”.

For those who attended SXSW in Sydney last month it was a bit of relief knowing that we spent those hours growing our minds and putting our attention to big ideas that provoke change.

A theme that stood out across sessions I attended was the need to think through unintended consequences. This was particularly pertinent when considering anything in the AI, tech and digital space.

Noelle Russell, the founder and chief AI officer at the AI Leadership Institute, wonderfully used the analogy of baby tiger (with the help of a toy tiger) to point out that so much of what we build in AI is like a baby tiger. Adorable, and seemingly harmless at the beginning, until they grow up to be a tiger that kills people.

As Noelle pointed out, these models aren’t built by adversarial people. Our biggest concern is what is accidental.

Baby tigers need a fence. The models become unwieldy if you don’t create ethical foundations.

Subsequently we all have a responsibility to think through unintended consequences and to course correct as quickly as we can.

Unintended consequences in social media and the impact on beauty and self-esteem was also a big topic. Taryn Brumfitt, 2023 Australian of the Year, shared a terrifying trend where people use beauty filters online to recreate what they look like, and then take that image to surgeons and ask them to make them look like that.

There was an audible gasp when John McKeon, GM of Unilever Personal Care shared research Dove had conducted finding that 51% of women with low body esteem would give up a year or more of their life if it would mean achieving their ideal appearance or body size.

As marketers we need to recognise that data has an inherent bias and create a more expanded vocabulary when we use it. Otherwise, AI will reduce the world to stereotypes. We need to look at more inclusive prompts and constantly feedback to the AI we are using.

AI learns, and it can only be better through our collective voices. Which leads me to another theme around the opportunity to build experiences for the collective.

To build for the collective experience as opposed to an individual one is an interesting counter to a world of highly personalised content and targeting.

Dr Zoe Condliffe is the founder and CEO of She’s A Crowd, a platform where women can anonymously share stories of sexual and gender-based violence. The stories are made visible on maps on the She’s a Crowd website.

This geo-based data is then used to inform policy makers and businesses in how to make safer spaces for women and gender diverse communities.

As Dr Condilffe says: we turn stories in maps, maps into data, and data into action.

Dr Condliffe was told that women would never want to share their stories online, but she knew from her study into ‘consciousness raising’ that there is power in connecting your experiences with the experiences of others. There is power in feeling heard, understood and connected. That is why people share.

By her own admission, Dr Condliffe is not a tech person, but she deeply understands survivors and could create a platform with them at the centre.

Dr Condliffe’s advice was to ‘think about the user as a collective not just an individual.’

Melissa Doyle and Naima Brown also spoke to the collective experience in ‘How to age against the machine’. Aging may be a personal experience, but it’s one we are all going through and one we must be more open to uncomfortable discussions about and learning from the collective wisdom of others.

Lastly, SXSW wouldn’t be the same without the wildly imaginative. Those who inspire with possibilities of what alternate realities and worlds could look like.

Max Arshavsky, the CEO of New Zealand tech start up Zenno, discussed our reliance on fuel to get into and be in space. He pointed out there is plenty of energy in space. We should learn to harness that resource. Zenno’s solution is using superconducting magnets, and they were the first to put this technology on orbit with SpaceX in December 2023.

Rachel Muscat, the CEO of Human Race, spoke about collaborating with wildly imaginative people but making sure you give space to let them unleash their creativity.

SXSW reminded me of the importance of people with deep understanding of human behaviour, the ability to think laterally, see the bigger picture and then design solutions with inclusivity in mind; be that a personal or collective experience. As a marketing community there is a big opportunity for us to be the ones to drive change.

When doing so it is incumbent on us to think through the unintended consequences of what we are putting out to the world, and to remember the power of our words and prompts when working with AI models.

And lastly, never forget to keep looking up and out for those wildly imaginative ideas that could change the worlds in which we all live.

Katie Rigg-Smith is the chief strategy officer at WPP Australia & New Zealand.