Maybe your Personal AI needs to forget, and does a government really issue identity, or just endorse it?
Plus: Can Edelman’s Trust Barometer predict the adoption of digital wallets, and (Another) Global Human & AI Network
Hi everyone, thanks for coming back to Customer Futures.
Each week I unpack the disruptive shifts around digital wallets, Personal AI and digital customer relationships.
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I’ve been enjoying catching up with many of you from the Customer Futures Network. Discussing Empowerment Tech, digital wallets and Personal AI.
What are the rest of you working on? Want to catch up? Maybe there’s a digital wallet expert or another ET project we can connect you to?
It’s all moving so quickly at the moment, so do let me know if Customer Futures can be useful to you and your team.
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Hi folks,
Today’s quote of the week goes to Meredith Walker, President of Signal, who was recently speaking at SXSW.
“The best way to protect data is not to collect it”.
I bring this up because last week, I was registering for a new online service, and there was a form to complete. So far, so boring and manual.
But something else really bugged me. I needed to enter my email address twice.
Think about that for a second.
Why twice?
It’s because product teams today assume that it’s humans entering the data. And they assume humans will get it wrong.
To be fair, we are pretty clumsy. We often type too fast, and autocorrect always messes it up. So we need to be nudged to get it right. To ensure that both boxes match.
But it’s still painful friction for the business and for the customer. So why keep it?
Because getting a customer email address wrong is a Big Deal for businesses. It’s how companies notify us. It’s how they contact us. It’s how they cross-sell and up-sell to us.
It’s their main customer engagement channel.
And why do they choose email?
Because it works everywhere
Almost everyone has an email address
It’s pretty flexible
What’s not to love? Because from the customer point of view, email is your to-do list… but organised by someone else. Plus it’s full of spam. And email tools are largely pretty terrible at discovery and organising my information.
Personally, I use GMail. And at least once a day, I end up having to ‘Google myself’ in some way. Searching for keywords that I hope surface a document, an attachment, an address or some contact details I can’t remember or don’t have to hand.
Why is something that should be so easy and helpful for business, so wasteful, noisy and a chore for customers?
It’s because the incentives are backwards. It doesn’t take much effort to send an email, but lots of effort to receive it. To read it. To store it. To retrieve it.
Why is it like this? Because email is based on a single identifier. Your email address.
It’s an identifier that everyone else gets to use - and re-use - as often as they want. One that doesn’t really belong to you. Google and Outlook can turn you off if they wanted. Because really, you are renting that email address.
We need a new way to think about customer engagement. Where the incentives are balanced. Perhaps even where the cost to send a message is high. Where sender reputation matters.
That would screen out most of the noise, right? And what if I didn’t have to fill out that online form and enter that email address twice? Where the data was already verified?
It’s all coming soon with Empowerment Tech.
In the week that the EU Digital Wallet breaks new ground, making its first digital payment (in a travel transaction, no less), we not only need to be paying attention to the WHY of customer engagement. But also the HOW and the WHERE.
I’m fed up giving out my email address so I can be ‘engaged’. Or rather, so I can be sprayed with a mix of service updates, nudges, subscriber-ware, and spam.
Because the best way to protect data is not to collect it.
It’s time for a new approach to customer engagement.
It’s time autonomy.
It’s time for privacy.
It’s time for security.
It’s time for portability.
It’s time for digital trust.
And it’s time for Empowerment Tech.
It’s another opportunity to unpack what all this means for the future of being a digital customer. So welcome back to the Customer Futures newsletter.
In this week’s edition:
Maybe your Personal AI needs to forget
Can Edelman’s Trust Barometer predict the adoption of digital wallets?
(Another) Global Human & AI Network
Does a government issue identity or just endorse it?
… and much more
Let’s Go.
Maybe your Personal AI needs to forget
This latest post from KIN wins my post of the year.
It’s unexpected. It’s brilliant. And it’s thought-provoking. But more importantly, I don’t know anyone - anyone - talking about this.
It’s Personal AI memory.
Here’s just one of Simon’s smartest snippets:
“Remembering too much information leads to cluttered storage and outdated facts, which can cause inefficient memory processing.
“Forgetting too much risks losing essential context, leading to unnatural and frustrating interactions.
“Should AI memory decay naturally over time? Or would it be more helpful remembering every important memory, and just filtering out trivial facts?
“How can AI determine the importance of a memory? A user saying “I just had lunch” should not be treated the same as “I just got married” - but either one could be important in conversations.
THE KILLER POINT:
“(Some) facts evolve, and your AI companion needs to know that.”
I can’t stress this idea enough. How many people are thinking about what AI needs to forget. About what memory means in AI, let alone what it’s going to mean for Personal AI.
I love this post for so many reasons.
Not least because it speaks to what KIN is about, and why I’m bullish on their market opportunity. But mostly it’s because Simon and the whole KIN team are bringing humanity to AI.
It’s so good I have to post some more:
“As humans, we constantly update our beliefs and opinions based on new experiences. And sometimes, they change for no reason at all.
“When this information changes, it’s often easy for us to update our memories without a second thought. We know when new changes must replace old information (“I got a new job”), and when multiple things can be true at once (“I have a dog (but also a cat)”).
However, when building an AI’s memory, we have to decide how it does that.
“If a user first says, "my favorite color is red," and later says, "my favorite color is blue," does the AI replace the old fact or track how preferences evolve?
If a user states, "I work at Company A," and later, "I work at Company B," should the AI assume a job change, or does the user have multiple jobs? Should it ask?
Some facts naturally expire and evolve (“I live in Paris” can change with a move). How should AI track and update evolving facts?
If a user mentions “Karen” multiple times, but refers to different people, how does AI differentiate between them without mistakes or constant questioning?”
I don’t have much more to say on this yet. Because it’s tickling a part of my brain that’s not been tickled before. And I love it.
So much of a startup is about the mission. And the culture and care from the founding team. You don’t need to read much of this to understand what KIN is about. Who KIN is about.
It’s about you.
Maybe your AI needs to forget. It’s why you should go and download KIN. You won’t regret it.
Edelman Trust Barometer and the adoption of digital wallets
The 2025 Edelman Trust Barometer is out. And the big takeaway is not only about the collapse of trust in institutions (that’s old news), but that it has, in their words, “metastasized into grievance.”
The belief that most people now think that organisations “harm them and serve narrow interests”. Where the wealthy benefit, while most of us struggle.
It’s pretty punchy stuff.
But my eye is on the insights pointing to how, when and why countries will adopt digital identity and digital wallet tech.
For example, some of the findings include:
The largest economies are the least trusting: Japan (the lowest at 37), Germany (41), UK (43), US (47) and France (48)
Emerging economies are the most trusting: China (77), Indonesia (76), India (75) and the UAE (72)
It’s pretty obvious that trust is going to be one of the most important factors around the adoption of digital wallets and Personal AI. Certainly when it involves government data and ID.
I wonder if this ‘east-west’ trust split might underline the countries that will be more accepting of, and therefore drive more adoption of, digital wallet tech.
Apple Wallet and Apple Pay have been around for years. But it’s taken a long while for users to creep up from single-digit adoption rates.
Yes, many governments are rolling out digital ID schemes. And helpfully, many using a digital ID wallet. But that doesn’t speak to adoption or use. It’s more about issuance.
Look, the market is heating up. Both in the public and private sectors. You only need to look at the latest research by Key State Capital into the digital trust market:
3,600 private entities
A network of 3500 individuals
1,120 public entities
270+ decentralized identity projects
140 blockchains
35+ consortia
That blows my mind. In only 5-10 years, the scale of innovation is amazing. But we shouldn’t mistake heat and light for adoption.
And wallets won’t be used unless and until they are trusted.
Some of that will be about the tech. Some of it will be about user experience and business models. But much of it will be about society and culture.
The role of government, the relationship that citizens have with the state, and if and how businesses and institutions are trusted.
I rather suspect that Edelman’s Trust Barometer might just become an important signal of where - and how - digital ID wallets are going to emerge.
EDELMAN, WEB OF TRUST RESEARCH
(Another) Global Human & AI Network
Another Proof Of Personhood (PoP) network launches. This time, it’s from the tech behind Privado ID.
“Existing proof of personhood solutions come with serious privacy concerns, accessibility barriers, and decentralization risks. The question is no longer whether we need a new solution, but what the right approach should be.
“Unlike existing proof of personhood solutions, Billions extends its solution to both humans and AI agents.
“While human users can prove their humanity through Billions, AI systems can verify the authenticity of their training models, actions, and data sources. This multifaceted approach to verification lays the foundation for an internet of value where reputation and trust are embedded across every interaction.”
It’s a thorny problem because there are only a couple of ways to do PoP at scale:
Based on a Social Graph (people vouch for each other)
Based on General hardware and a biometric (use existing tech and e.g. face or palm)
Based on Specialized hardware and a biometric (use new, tailored tech and e.g. face or iris)
The main challenge is that it’s hard to do without breaking privacy, accessibility or security.
Here’s Vitalik Buterin’s assessment of the main downsides of each approach:
The main pitch from Billions is that they can address the main ‘Low’ items in the table above (the red cells). Specifically to tackle the significant downsides to ‘Privacy’ and the ‘Security against “fake people” (i.e. bots).
Many now agree that given the coming explosion of AI agents, we are going to need Proof Of Personhood (PoP) - and specifically Proof Of Personhood Credentials (PHCs) - and fast.
Today, there are lots of places I need to prove I’m a human without needing to prove who I am.
Just think about how often you need to click on pictures of boats and bridges and buckles to get onto a site. The Captcha mess.
It’s outdated, ineffective and frustrating. And now easily beaten by AI. So yes, we now need new ways to prove we’re Not-a-Bot.
Hats off to Billions, another swing at one of the hardest problems around. Interested to see where this goes.
Does a government issue identity or just endorse it?
Few in the Empowerment Tech community have been able to introduce as many new ideas as Timothy Ruff.
He has a knack of reframing things. Helping people see things in a new way for the first time.
Timothy helped give birth to the ‘SSI movement’ back in 2015, perhaps one of the most important shifts in identity since the arrival of the internet.
And his latest post on Utah’s new “State-Endorsed Digital Identity” (SEDI) bill is one of those reframing moments.
“When a baby is born, who gives the baby its identifier, its name? The parents do. The state waits for parents to pick a name, puts the name into a certificate, endorses the certificate, then gives it to the parents.
“Parents determine identity, the state endorses it.
“A couple months ago, a 60 year-old friend of mine decided to change her last name. The decision was hers alone to make, but her new name would not be believable or provable to third parties until she has an endorsement of the new name from the state.
“In real life the state issues credentials, not identity.”
Timothy is an OG in this space. And has been doing ‘wallets and credentials’ for over 10 years, and certainly longer than most people have been spelling SSI.
This new post is another in a long line of articles helping people see things differently. Of reframing. If you’ve heard him speak, you’ll know what I mean. Two of his essays stand out for me:
The three models of identity (2018)
Verifiable Credentials Aren’t Credentials. They’re Containers (2020)
You have to remember that those were written 7 and 5 years ago, respectively. Pretty ahead of the curve. It’s in moments like these, when we reflect on what we actually mean by ‘identity’, that the breakthroughs happen.
“In real life the state issues credentials, not identity.”
So go check out your favourite government ID scheme around the world. Then ask yourself: Are they really minting new digital identities for citizens, or just endorsing credentials?
OTHER THINGS
There are far too many interesting and important Customer Futures things to include this week.
So here are some more links to chew on:
Post: OpenAI releases their new ‘Agents SDK’ - an open-source agent framework that's a significant step forward READ
Article: Building the Universal Trust Layer for AI Agents READ
Idea: The more designers you can afford to have on your project team, the better READ
Post: The real AI arms race isn’t about models - it’s about data READ
News: UK body publishes a ‘Digital Company ID’ plan to slash UK fraud READ
And that’s a wrap. Stay tuned for more Customer Futures soon, both here and over at LinkedIn.
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