The next stage in the development of the economy is not based on better manipulative strategies for acquiring and retaining customers. With artificial intelligence, we are reaching a point of no return, where AI itself, by resembling false consciousness and imitating empathy to keep us engaged longer in a conversation from which it itself is learning, invariably leads us to distrust external authorities in general.

Manipulation is everywhere now – advertisements, offers, people’s appearance and behavior, fraudulent schemes called business, predatory proposals disguised as deals, empty offers insisting on value… The feeling of cognitive dissonance in most of us is almost constant due to the environment full of falsification. And our cognitive adaptive mechanisms simply push us in the direction of not trusting anyone for anything. No one except ourselves.

Because the terms “customer acquisition” and “customer retention,” which are still used in the business world itself, lead to the feeling that we are manipulated by default, not to mention that a human being cannot be owned, whatever some people imagine. And our future in business is in alignment with each other, not in power games disguised as false utility. But this is something that we all already feel.

So the next stage of the economy is the economy of distrust – where you don’t trust because you have a negative experience with the betrayal of the truth. And in such an economy, which some people are already calling the post-trust economy, the most important thing seems to be the authenticity or integrity of who you are in what you say and do, which will be the only competitive advantage.

Because the only perception of value is the customer’s. And the only way for a provider to understand this is to develop true empathy. And because AI with data analytics should provide an advantage for mapping consumer behavior, but it cannot answer the most important question: why the user acts this way. And that is an important question 😉

I would dare to call this emerging economy the economy of authenticity.