Does AI Serve the Customer or Our Business Interests?

There’s a question that keeps coming up in the AI debate. Does AI serve the customer or our business interests? It’s the right question. And every time it gets asked, I think: Now it’s going to get honest.

It doesn’t.

The answer comes immediately, and it comes in marketing speak. Personalization. Customer experience. Individual outreach. Customer-centric action. The question is not answered. It’s sidestepped by pretending there is no contradiction.

But the contradiction is there. It was always there. Every personalization a company offers is based on data the customer didn’t give voluntarily. Or gave without knowing what would happen to it. Personalization means: We know things about you that you didn’t tell us. And we use that knowledge to sell you more.

That’s not a conspiracy theory. That’s the business model. It’s in every book about digital marketing. But it’s never stated that way. It’s stated as: We give the customer what they need before they know it. That sounds like service. It’s surveillance with a friendly face.

AI analyzes customer data, recognizes patterns, and makes predictions. When someone is likely to buy. What they’ll need next. How to address them so they stay. The language is positive. Relevant, individual, timely. But the mechanics are the same as any form of manipulation: I know something about you that you don’t know, and I use it.

The ethics question comes up in the discussion, but as a side topic, not as a foundation. That’s the difference. When ethics is a side topic, it’s optional. You engage with it or you don’t. It has no bearing on the strategy. The AI strategy gets planned. Ethics gets bolted on afterward like a seal of approval.

I’ve worked in companies where the ethics discussion happened after the product decision had already been made. The question was never: Should we do this? The question was: How do we communicate that we’re doing this? That’s not ethics. That’s PR.

The honest answer to the question “Does AI serve the customer or the business?” is: the business. Always. As long as companies are the ones asking the question, they’re asking it from a position where they control the answer. The customer isn’t at the table.

Personalization could serve the customer. If the customer decided which data gets collected. If they could see what the AI knows about them. If they could see the patterns that were created for them. If they could object. But that would lower the conversion rate. And the conversion rate is the metric that counts. Not satisfaction. Conversion.

As long as the ethics discussion is led by sellers, it stays a fig leaf. Not because sellers are bad people. But because it’s in the nature of selling to resolve the contradiction between customer interest and business interest by pretending it doesn’t exist.

The right question gets asked. The right answer is missing.