Sandra, CEO of the Nuremberg Institute for Market Decisions, asked Matthew to keynote the institute's annual European marketing summit in Nuremberg, which because of COVID-19 had not run in person for more than two years. The institute chose the End of Choice as its theme, and Matthew's task was to surface the innovations and business norms that are turning our freedom of choice into little more than an illusion.
We live with more choice than ever, he argued, but in an increasingly algorithmic society the act of choosing is all too often left to machines. Whether it is the biased corporate algorithms behind our smart devices or the ones behind our web searches, machines increasingly decide the best options for us, rightly or wrongly, and then ask us to choose between the options they have already picked.
"Are we really choosing for ourselves? Or are we all just mindlessly pressing the Buy button for goods that are at best a mediocre fit for our needs?"Matthew Griffin, Nuremberg, August 2022
That raises an uncomfortable question: are we really choosing for ourselves, or just pressing the Buy button on goods that are at best a mediocre fit for our needs? As we trust machines more and delegate more decisions to them in the name of convenience, our freedom to choose is quietly undermined.
Nor is this limited to consumer goods. Matthew showed how it is creeping into every part of society, from machines making buying decisions for themselves to hiring and firing decisions, and even the choice of lifelong partners. His closing warning was that this is only the tip of the iceberg and, unless we stay vigilant, the start of a very slippery slope.
