regulation

From Pandemic to Panopticon: Are We Habituating Aggressive Surveillance?

/ Fiona J McEvoy / 1 Comment

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In Shoshana Zuboff’s 2019 book The Age of Surveillance Capitalism, she recalls the response to the launch of Google Glass in 2012. Zuboff describes public horror, as well as loud protestations from privacy advocates who were deeply concerned that the product’s undetectable recording of people and places threatened to eliminate “a person’s reasonable expectation of privacy and/or anonymity.” 

Zuboff describes the product:

Google Glass combined computation, communication, photography, GPS tracking, data retrieval, and audio and video recording capabilities in a wearable format patterned on eyeglasses. The data it gathered — location, audio, video, photos, and other personal information — moved from the device to Google’s servers.

At the time, campaigners warned of a potential chilling effect on the population if Google Glass were to be married with new facial recognition technology, and in 2013 a congressional privacy caucus asked then Google CEO Larry Page for assurances on privacy safeguards for the product. 

Eventually, after visceral public rejection, Google parked Glass in 2015 with a short blog announcing that they would be working on future versions. And although we never saw the relaunch of a follow-up consumer Glass, the product didn’t disappear into the sunset as some had predicted. Instead, Google took the opportunity to regroup and redirect, unwilling to turn its back on the chance of harvesting valuable swathes of what Zuboff terms “behavioral surplus data”, or cede this wearables turf to a rival. 

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Eurobots: Regulation rules in the European AI scene

/ Fiona J McEvoy / Leave a comment

The following is a guest post by Erin Green, PhD, a Brussels-based AI ethics and public engagement specialist. For more on the European scene, check out my recent interview with Hill + Knowlton Strategies “Creating Ethical Rules for AI.”

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When it comes to the global AI stage, China and the US consistently grab headlines as their so-called arms race heats up, while countries like Japan and South Korea lead the way in innovation and social receptivity. Europe, though, is taking a slightly different approach – partly by choice, partly by design.

The 28 countries (Brexit pending) that make up the economic and political bloc of the European Union each have a stake in the AI game. Bigger, richer players like the UK (pledging 1000 places for PhDs in AI) and Germany (€3 billion invested in the coming years) are sinking eye-widening resources into keeping up with the proverbial Joneses. Smaller nations, like Malta and its not-quite 500,000 people, are turning to foreign investment and partnerships to guarantee a spot in the major leagues.

Somewhat independent of these interests, the EU itself is trying to carve out space in terms of regulatory prowess and in bringing coherence to a rather chaotic European AI scene. Think this is a bureaucratic exercise with not much reach or consequence beyond the Berlaymont? Just remember all those GDPR emails that clogged up your inbox sometime around May 25, 2018. The EU has real regulatory reach.

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Four AI themes to watch out for in 2019

/ Fiona J McEvoy / Leave a comment

This article by Fiona J McEvoy (YouTheData.com) was originally posted on All Turtles.

Jonas Svidras

We’re still just a few days into the New Year and all eyes have been trained on Las Vegas, NV. Over the last week or so, the great and the good of the consumer tech industry have been shamelessly touting their wares at CES. Each jockeying to make a big noise in a crowded market by showcasing “life-enhancing products” with whizzy new features—like this “intelligent toilet”…

In the organized chaos of nearly 4.5k exhibitors and a staggering 182k delegates, pundits have been working overtime to round-up the best and the rest. At the same time, commentators have been trying to distill core themes and make sage judgments about the tech trajectory of 2019.

In truth, no matter what gadgetry emerges victorious in the end of CES, there will still be some fundamental “meta themes” affecting technology in 2019. And though they may not have secured as many column inches as cutsie robots and 5G this week, these core topics are likely to have more staying power.

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