Roland T. Rust, University of Maryland

The Feeling Economy: MANAGING IN THE NEXT GENERATION OF AI

The first generation of AI has focused primarily on replacing human tasks that are physical, mechanical, or repetitive. This has resulted in an economy (the Thinking Economy) in which the most successful human workers emphasize cognitive skills, and physical workers, such as farmers and factory workers, are mostly left behind. Conventional wisdom currently assumes that workers can protect themselves from obsolescence by making themselves more analytical. This may not be the case. The second generation of AI, focusing on analytical thinking and even intuition, is quickly mastering an increasing number of cognitive tasks. This is causing human workers to emphasize feeling tasks to a greater degree. We describe the changes that managers will have to make to cope with this.

Roland T. Rust is Distinguished University Professor and David Bruce Smith Chair in Marketing at the Robert H. Smith School of Business at the University of Maryland, where he is founder and Executive Director of the Center for Excellence in Service. He is also Visiting Chair in Marketing Research at Erasmus University (Netherlands) and International Research Fellow of Oxford University’s Centre for Corporate Reputation (UK). He served as Editor of the Journal of Marketing, founded the annual Frontiers in Service Conference, and was founding Editor of the Journal of Service Research. He is currently Editor of the International Journal of Research in Marketing (IJRM). emerging Feeling Economy.