From decision-making to problem-solving, artificial intelligence (AI) is rapidly revolutionizing the world of senior living lead generation.
AI is a field of computer science that enables machines to replicate human cognitive abilities such as problem-solving, decision-making, and learning. Technologies like machine learning, deep learning, and natural language processing (NLP) apply these capabilities to create intelligent digital systems that can handle tasks more quickly and accurately than humans.
What are the ethical challenges of AI?
As artificial intelligence makes its way into industries like senior living and care, it brings both opportunities and risks.
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While AI provides effective and efficient ways to generate leads, it also runs the risk of leading to real consequences for seniors and their families, infringement on other professionals’ copyrights, and reputational harm to your company. When putting the immense potential of AI to good use, you’ll need skilled and empathetic oversight to ensure your team meets ethical standards.
How can senior living operators and marketers use AI responsibly?
AI should augment human expertise, not replace it.
At Craft & Communicate, we use AI to support our creativity and strategic thinking, but we also maintain an environment where we make the most of our team members’ varied experiences and expertise.
Here are some specific tips for ethical AI marketing solutions.
Beware of Biases
AI’s ability to personalize and present content to specific demographics is one of its biggest strengths. However, because it’s trained on imperfect existing data, AI is impacted by implicit biases — seemingly reasonable yet unfair assumptions about specific groups of people — that may be hard to identify or detect.
Biases in AI-Generated Content
For example, even if a community were to generate website content targeting older adults, it might speak directly to people of one gender or another, resulting in prospective residents not contacting the community because they don’t feel included.
In turn, AI-generated content can perpetuate existing beliefs and values that are already common in society, whether or not they are harmful.
Biases in AI Targeting
If you take a look at who is being targeted by your ads, it’s clear that not all available age groups will be evenly represented. Having a target market of seniors and their adult children is ideal; however, you’ll still want to see if anything else in the data stands out.
To search for patterns of bias, regularly review your entire set of marketing outputs and reporting — including website content, social media posts, and paid advertisements.
Check for Originality
Since AI tools are often trained on vast amounts of publicly available data, there’s a risk that they may generate content that too closely resembles existing work.
That’s why you will really want to implement a plagiarism-checking step in your content creation workflow.
Plagiarism-Checking Tools for Copywriting
Among their other features, tools like Grammarly and Copyscape exist to help you detect instances of duplicate content.
Older adults and their families expect authenticity from the communities they consider, so delivering original, well-crafted content is a necessary part of meeting those expectations.
Look Out for Mistakes
In addition to relying on biases, algorithms might not be able to distinguish other nuances of language and context. They run into issues with understanding complex human behavior, leading to unexpected results when trying to generate personalized ads or content.
Spotting AI-generated mistakes can be tricky, as they are not always obvious. Here are the most important errors to be aware of.
Grammatical Errors in AI-Generated Content
- Incorrect grammar or spelling.
- Overly simplistic or repetitive content.
Factual Errors in AI-Generated Content
- Information about any facts, services, products, and features.
- Content that appears to be generated for a very wide audience without accounting for individual needs.
And, in the unfortunate but hopefully rare situation where an AI-generated mistake is published, take responsibility for it as a company by addressing the issue promptly. Acknowledge the error publicly if necessary, and communicate with any affected individuals directly to explain what went wrong. This will be your best option for maintaining long-term trust with potential or current residents and families.
Ensure Compliance with Applicable Laws and Regulations
As artificial intelligence continues to integrate into the workforce, many governments are beginning to create laws and regulations for its use. They tend to focus on areas such as data privacy, fairness in automation, safety, and cybersecurity.
We recommend that you stay informed of the latest updates from respective governments in order to ensure they are complying with applicable laws. Additionally, your company should create internal policies that outline best practices for AI within your organization and those of your vendors.
Communicating AI Policies and Best Practices
Share transparent guidelines for handling artificial intelligence by taking the following actions.
- Ensure that team members are aware of the steps for setting up and managing your AI solutions.
- Remain aware of each team member’s individual strengths and weaknesses when utilizing these tools to maximize efficiency.
- Offer regular, up-to-date education about AI policies in the workplace to ensure that everyone on the team knows how to maximize their marketing results.
- Be truthful to the public as well; explain which types of software you employ as well as how they improve the experiences of seniors and their family members.
So, is artificial intelligence ethical?
It can be when paired with an expert senior living marketing team! By taking proactive steps now, communities are able to avoid difficulties associated with AI technologies in the future.
As the use of AI in senior living marketing continues to expand, it’s crucial for care providers to consider not just the rewards of this technology, but also the risks. Reach out to our experienced team at Craft & Communicate with a successful track record of using AI to grow communities’ qualified leads.
