My experience with think pieces, newsletters, podcasts, conference sessions, and general attitudes about artificial intelligence (AI) has been that people either:

A) think AI is going to take over the world (positive) and can’t wait to make it write them a movie script or organize their whole computer, or

B) think AI is going to take over the world (negative) and can’t get past catastrophizing. The session I attended at PurePub.ai, a global conference about how AI is reshaping the publishing industry, was a refreshing middle ground. “Community Is the Moat: Audience Engagement in the AI Era” was a lively and fascinating discussion between publishing professionals in the scholarly journal space about how to engage and even grow their readership in the age of AI. No one denounced AI as evil, but no one resorted to idol worship either. Instead, these panelists offered a nuanced take about adapting to this rapid change.

The takeaway? Focus on the humans.

Though this was a publishing-focused conference, the insights from this session are broadly applicable, and many of them made sense to me in an association management context. There isn’t too much of a difference between thinking about readers and thinking about members—they’re all audiences, and the way we approach them is key to our success.

From Segments to Individuals

Building a robust community within an organization starts with the individual members, and it’s more important than ever that we treat them as just that: individuals.

We can no longer think of our membership in broad segments; we need to understand them at the individual level. Rather than thinking about taxonomy (dividing the audience into categories), Mike Cannon of the American Speech-Language-Hearing Association (ASHA) encouraged participants to explore the ontology of their organizations. Who are your members and how do they relate to each other, to your organization, and to your content and offerings?

Considering these relationships allows you to make deeper connections for your members. If you know what they are reading or what content they engage with, you can better understand how to direct them to other resources that will benefit them. You can also use this information to tailor your offerings to your audience’s needs. One panelist pointed out that reviewing article submissions for their journal allows them to actively learn with their community and understand what topics interest them at the moment. The same can be true for an association putting on a conference or webinar series. Paying attention to the common threads between submissions or the repeated topics of interest can help you focus on the content your members want the most.

Community as Competitive Advantage

Acknowledging that AI is decent at creating or adapting content, the panelists highlighted the importance of a community-focused approach. Membership organizations that emphasize building and understanding their communities are at an advantage, they said. Building community allows membership organizations to build trust because their members understand who the organization is, what it represents, and why it should have authority. The brand identity of an association in the age of AI should focus on maintaining this trust and providing a consistent experience to members.

But a community is more than a group of people with a shared interest. To truly succeed, associations should consider their members’ overall experience, rather than individual moments or offerings. Hosting a well-attended webinar is great, but it’s not much of a community-building exercise if you never see 70 percent of those attendees again. The panelists shared that they’ve had greater success focusing on creating authentic interactions and experiences that center humans and cannot be reduced to data points. They called these “AI disruption-proof” experiences—bringing people together in a room, in person or virtually, for discussions and activities that highlight their connected values and desires. These kinds of experiences are irreplaceable no matter how far AI advances in the next decade.

Where AI Fits In

With this focus on community building and human-centered engagement, none of the panelists in this session dismissed AI. Instead, they stressed its utility as a tool to help them do their work, not to do it for them. AI tools can reduce pain points in a way that does not undermine the quality of your content or your community’s trust. Data organization and analysis with AI can help an association understand its members and how they interact with content. Claire Webber of IOP Publishing said that her organization has found that readers brought to their platform through AI tools are more likely to engage with their content for longer. AI can help readers get where they’re going more quickly and find the resources that will be most useful to them. These are benefits of AI that can enhance member experience while still centering the most important part of the equation: the human.