OPINION:
There’s a new moneymaker in town, and it’s called Selling Your Identity, and while the privacy nightmares are real, it’s roping in thousands of participants around the world — all in the name of artificial intelligence.
As The Guardian wrote in one headline: “Thousands of people are selling their identities to train AI — but at what cost?”
At what cost indeed.
Here’s how it works: For the special price of fill-in-the-blank, you can sell your private phone chats, your video of your morning stroll, your audio from your wanderings through the city — and more — to artificial intelligence companies whose tech-savvy specialists then use the data to perfect their next AI creation.
As The Guardian noted, an 18-year-old welding apprentice in Chicago was paid a couple of hundred dollars by Neon Mobile for his private phone chats. A 27-year-old South African man was paid $14 through the app Kled AI for a video he recorded while strolling through his neighborhood. And a 22-year-old in India has been earning about $100 a month from the crowdsource company Silencio by granting permission to access his phone’s microphone as he goes about his day.
Easy money, at least on the surface.
But the tradeoff is personal privacy — and not just for the willing participants. As these companies are able to mine more and more data, and in turn, use that data to fine-tune AI, and develop better and more powerful AI, all of society is roped into the ensuing consequences.
What begins as a voluntary submission of personal data for a few bucks morphs into technology that can be used to track large groups of people — even whole countries — who are either forced to comply with the AI-fueled program, or are unwilling participants of the AI-fueled program. Think a few steps ahead and what these companies will do with this data, including where this data will be sold, and think of the technology to come.
Facial recognition used at airports, at large convention centers, at public buildings, on city streets. Tracking and surveillance and location identifying technology, both visual and audio, that’s used by police and law enforcement, with or without warrants. Think of the military uses, some good, some bad, some downright ugly. Think of the many government uses to secure buildings, to identify who’s coming, who’s going, who’s just standing around doing nothing. Jan. 6? Public protests against politicians and political messaging?
Think of the businesses that will start to regularly install tracking and surveillance devices on their products, with or without customer knowledge; car manufacturers, medical device manufacturers, television manufacturers. Think of the predictive technology that could come and the controls that could be placed on mass populations based on supposedly looming health hazards and lurking security dangers.
Think, too, that the more the world moves toward technology, the more risks for financial fraud, identity theft, cybercrime and national insecurity.
The more that humans will be replaced by computers.
“In exchange for a few dollars,” The Guardian wrote, “[these gig] trainers are fueling an industry that may eventually render their skills obsolete, while leaving some of them vulnerable to a future of deepfakes, identity theft and digital exploitation that they are only just beginning to understand.”
Too many of today’s youth have already been raised in a culture where personal space is near-meaningless — where convenience trumps privacies and a swipe of a hand over a chip reader to pay for $20 of groceries seems a worthwhile time-saver of five seconds, and where posting all the mundane details of one’s life on social media is a nonstop daily activity. It’s only a matter of time before those who are accustomed to ceding privacy and personal data for ease and speed of transactions will expect all the world to participate in the system, so as not to slow down the system as a whole. There’s nothing worse than being stuck in line at Walmart behind an elderly woman with poor vision who sifts through her bag for her checkbook at the cashier line — right?
Yesterday’s checkbook has become today’s debit card and will become tomorrow’s chip reader and will become the next day’s facial transaction. And after that?
The possibilities are endless.
Data collection of an individual can result in data collection of entire societies and the loss of personal privacies and freedoms of all of America if we’re not careful.
• Cheryl Chumley can be reached at cchumley@washingtontimes.com or on Twitter, @ckchumley. Listen to her podcast “Bold and Blunt” by clicking HERE. And never miss her column; subscribe to her newsletter and podcast by clicking HERE. Her latest book, “God-Given Or Bust: Defeating Marxism and Saving America With Biblical Truths,” is available by clicking HERE.
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