The incomparable Koven Smith asks some important questions about how AI might impact the museum sector, particularly key differentiators like trust and authority:

I’ve always been somewhat skeptical of the “museums are the most trusted institutions in the universe” trope, but here is a situation in which a loss of authority in a very small situation has the potential to lead to a real collapse in the purpose of the institution.

This is very similar to how I’m starting to think about customer-facing AI at my current company (a retailer), where we strive to be the most trusted in our industry. Activating LLM-powered experiences is a decision that should not be taken lightly. We should take a measured, thoughtful, proactive, and research-based approach, as Koven advocates for in his post.

Nobody trusts Walmart or Target or Amazon the way our customers trust us. Let them rush; they have little trust to lose. The bottom line is that we need to be careful rushing to implement in customer- and employee-facing experiences, so as to preserve – and ultimately grow – the trust we’ve earned over decades with both groups.

I still maintain: a company brave enough to publicly lean away from AI and lean into humanity as a differentiator could have one hell of a winning strategy.