Digital Marketing Assistant Professor Andy Jeon remains curious, hopeful in AI research

Digital Marketing Assistant Professor Andy Jeon remains curious, hopeful in AI research

When Digital Marketing Assistant Professor Yongwoog “Andy” Jeon was growing up in South Korea, his curiosity often led him to investigate new things.

Andy Jeon

“I remember my little self being extremely curious, literally about everything,” he says. “But I especially loved to go to the forest to find out about new bugs and plants, and this curiosity is still in me. Also, I enjoyed reading books like encyclopedias that my dad bought. I still vividly remember seeing the photos of actual robots, back in the 1980s, which really fascinated me.”

This early fascination with artificial intelligence (AI) foreshadowed the career he would one day build as an instructor and researcher. While earning his undergraduate degree in media and communications from the University of London, England, and his first master’s degree in East Asian Studies from the University of Cambridge, he studied a broad range of areas including communication, advertising, literature, sociology, anthropology, philosophy and psychology.

After his time in England, Jeon worked for three years in the Korea Information Society Development Institute (KISDI), a Korean government-affiliated research institute that specialized in information and communication technologies (IT). In KISDI, he worked with government officials and policymakers in researching IT markets, regulation and policies. During this time, he became fascinated with learning how new technologies like AI and virtual reality (VR)/augmented reality (AR) impact consumers and, at large, society.

From there, Jeon wanted to pursue further studies in these areas. This is why he decided to move to the U.S. and earned his M.A. degree in telecommunications from Indiana University Bloomington, and his Ph.D. in advertising from The University of Texas at Austin. It was during his doctoral studies that Jeon started researching AI in a more formal capacity.

“I decided to develop a chatbot on my own for research purposes because most AI research asks participants to ‘imagine’ having a chat with a chatbot, which cannot provide real behavior data. So, I developed the chatbot to study how a chatbot can be used for marketers,” Jeon says.

His first finding from the chatbot research was that the higher-level human job titles, such as “customer manager,” can have a halo effect on an AI conversational agent. Jeon found that people use identity cues, like job titles and names, as a shortcut to make judgments about the AI agents even when these agents are not human. Thus, the AI manager received more favorable perceptions from people than the AI agents with no job title or lower-position titles.

From there, Jeon was hooked on researching how implied human characteristics may influence the way AI is perceived in our world. He came to NIU as an assistant professor in 2019 and since then has taught Principle of Digital Marketing (MKTG 370) as well as AI in Digital Marketing, a required course for Master of Science degree in digital marketing.

In his research, Jeon applies social/psychological perspectives in building theoretical models to provide practical answers to the questions of how consumers think, feel and act in digital environments. His research findings have been published in dozens of journals and presented at many academic conferences.

While his initial question about AI working as a manager may have seemed like a wild stretch of the imagination years ago, it is much more believable in our current time.

“AI is much faster and much more efficient today,” Jeon said. “ChatGPT is one great example that shows how scarily capable it is in understanding and answering people’s inquiries.”

Jeon contends that his research can shed light on some of the most pressing questions about AI ethics today.

“We’re asking questions like, ‘Can AI replace certain jobs?’ But we can think of many cases in human history when the jobs done by humans have long been taken by machines. For example, in the past, we hired a person to light the flames of streetlamps. Those are now done automatically. Also, elevator operators, telephone operators and other human jobs have been taken by machines. While these jobs were taken, new jobs such as software developers, product managers, cybersecurity managers and digital marketers arose due to the very technologies we developed.”

It can also help students in real time. Recently, Jeon and other college faculty conducted research on an “AI tutorbot,” funded by the College of Business Summer Grant. Their research examined how AI technologies, including chatbots, can help students succeed in their business educations.

However, there are negative sides to AI. Before moving too fast with the replacement of human jobs, Jeon insists that it is important to prepare for the potential impact on employment and the workforce by not moving too quickly. Analysis and time can prevent problems in the future, he says.

“As jobs are automated and replaced by AI systems, there is a risk of widespread job loss and displacement which could have significant economic and social consequences. It is important to develop policies and programs to help workers transition to new jobs or industries, and to provide support for those who are affected by job loss,” he adds.

Jeon notes that there is also a risk in developing “AI employees” that are biased in making discriminatory decisions because AI is fundamentally human made. In other words, can AI only be as equitable and inclusive as its creators?

“It is important to develop ethical guidelines and regulations for the development and deployment of AI systems such as AI managers to ensure that they are fair, transparent and unbiased,” Jeon says. “I just want people to pause for a moment to think about the pros and cons of having AI technologies. After all, AI will become what we imagine AI to become. Humans have always set the directions of the development of the technologies, in both favorable and unfavorable ways.”

In an era when headlines are announcing AI milestones daily, what will be next for Jeon’s research? His latest focus links the concept of AI influencers.

“Recently, I have been conducting research about ChatGPT-powered AI influencers, or virtual personalities that move and talk just like a human, and how they impact marketing in certain sectors. One example of this is Nova by SoulMachines. This AI agent is designed to mimic human cognition and behaviors. Instead of a static and nonautonomous chatbot, AI influencers like Nova seem like they are alive. That is, they talk and move autonomously,” he says.

Jeon has also recently started conducting research about the metaverse and how marketing impacts individuals differently when they are acting as their avatars in a virtual reality.

“In the metaverse, people can create their own new identity, often ones they cannot have in physical reality, and there is a huge marketing implication for this technology,” he says. “For example, if we go to the metaverse and show an advertisement for some product, are people seeing this advertisement as a real person or are they seeing this advertisement as another person with a new identity?”

Jeon was awarded a grant through NIU Research and Artistry, and it has allowed him to work with an outside developer to build a unique metaverse where he can conduct his research.

“I can actually show a video advertisement, or I can do a marketing activity within this virtual reality,” he says. “Students and community members participate in the research. They can just play with the avatar and then we expose some marketing messages to this avatar to learn about how they react.”

With every year that passes on campus, Jeon derives more fulfillment from his in-depth research and the impact it has on his colleagues and fellow marketing researchers, as well as his students who cite and discuss his work.

“When I see people are influenced by what I’m doing, I definitely feel happy and, at the same time, I feel responsibility,” he says.

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