When it comes to AI, you must build consumer trust 

It wasn’t a good week for Jamie – suspended after seven years of loyal service. But there was no other way: screenshots of her giving safe sex advice in response to COVID-19 queries started making the rounds on social media. When asked about rapid antigen tests, Jamie said: “The polio vaccine is available at polyclinics, private clinics, and travelers’ clinics.” Jamie is a virtual assistant implemented across 70 Singaporean government agency websites to answer questions from the public so that human experts can dedicate time to more complex issues. In October 2021, Singapore’s health ministry temporarily disabled the “Ask Jamie” chatbot on its website.

As AI mishaps go, this was an innocent one. Yet with media stories appearing week in and week out of more serious AI-related accidents – and online databases springing up to document them – it’s not hard to see that trust in AI, and by extension, digital trust, is at stake.

AI adoption by businesses has been…