A future not controlled by a corporate algorithm
I don’t want my future controlled by corporate algorithms. Controlling my personal data is the only way to avoid that - help us to help you control yours.
Hi. So,
i don’t want my future controlled by corporate algorithms
There are 2.7 billion people on Facebook, and probably 99.9% of them have never downloaded the personal data that Facebook have collected, let alone looked at it. I can understand why - it's not exactly pretty, and there's way too much for you to actually read.
Yup that’s right, one of my files is 324,034 lines long. Too long to look colourful and pretty.
why would you even want to know about your data
I hope to persuade you via a little detour. We can probably all agree that "AI" is the future. Everyone seems very confident that it's the current and future computing revolution, and will allow us to do all sorts of amazing things. At the moment, AIs (or more accurately for now: machine learning models) that companies like Facebook, Youtube, Amazon and Twitter have built use data to predict and describe things about us, to decide what to show us on internet platforms and what not to show us. They sit right in our personal information streams, filtering it for us in the way that is likely to maximise the attention we pay to their platforms, and maximise the chances of us clicking their ads, or buying their products - because that's how they make money!
data lets AIs know who you are
These AI models rely critically on the data that is fed into them, data that these companies collect every time you watch a video, click a link, message a friend, or visit a product page. This data allows the AI to "get to know" you - to understand what makes you tick and adapt to it. Without this data they wouldn't be able to show you targeted ads at all! They wouldn't be able to put you in addictive echo chambers based on your interests, to show you the perfect video to keep you on-platform based on your mood, or encourage you to share with friends at just the right time.
This data is key to their product - and by product I don't mean the app you use! I mean Jared Lanier's interpretation, based on the insight that if the product is free then you are the product. It's not even just your attention, ”It's the gradual, slight, imperceptible change in our own behaviour and perception that is the product.” That is what these companies are selling to advertisers via your data. Changes in your behaviour, and your perception of the world. Reducing the amount of true psychological freedom you have, with this other "agent", the AI model, defining many of the informational inputs that you receive every day.
that’s bad as you lose control and there are side effects
Today, this is already a problem. We think it might have swayed the election of the most powerful country in the world. The AI-powered feeds of these products can worsen mental health problems, and maybe even cause them. We become addicted to infinite feeds of content that are mostly not productive or joyful, we see ads we don't want and we buy things we don't need.
and this is just the start
Progress in AI has dramatically accelerated over the past 10 years. GPT-3 still blows my mind to this day (I promise none of this was written with GPT-3). That is going to continue. The amount of data collected on each of us is also growing exponentially. The impact of both of these on our lives is already massive, and it's not going to get smaller, it's going to get even bigger.
there is so much more data to collect
Should we just accept this as part of the future? AIs will know more and more about us until our whole day is designed by an AI personal assistant, where we don't know how much they know about us, and we certainly can't control how much they know? Data collection has so far been mostly textual records of things that happen, as that’s computer readable. With computer vision and NLP, audio and video will also become computer-readable. One day, nearly everything we do will be recorded as data, because it will be “useful”.
I currently have around 8 GB of data (including messages and media) that Facebook has collected on me, and 6 GB of data (including emails and media) that Google has collected.
one human vs one AI, who would win
A future where individuals:
can't understand what's happening with their personal data
can't control what data gets used by whom for what purposes
can't choose to use it themselves, however they want
is a future that has a much higher chance of being dystopian than one where individuals understand their data and can control it - deciding what AIs can and can't see and use.
A lot gets said about AI alignment, how do we as a species make sure that AI is aligned with what we want/is good for us as humans, but very little has been written about AI-Individual alignment - the individual's interactions with AI. How does the individual stay in control, when on the other side of the little screen in their hand (or their smart-glasses) there is an AI that knows more about them than any human ever could, whose goals are aligned with the profit of its parent corporation, not with the human needs of that individual?
Over the long haul, I hope Ethi can help solve this individual-AI alignment problem by putting the individual firmly in control of what they share and helping them understand what the data will and won't get used for if they do.
what would happen if we made it not bad
A future where individuals can understand, control and use their data how they see fit would have huge positive ramifications. Individuals could use their data to:
build their own personalised recommendation and discovery systems, that could help them surf the information overload on the Internet (Ethi is working on this)
build predictive systems that analyse their mood and behaviour to help them manage their mental health better with personalised therapy
have online networking or dating that matches you based on your personality and interests, rather than just your follower count or visual beauty
donate their anonymised data to scientific projects, or consciously opt-in to their favoured political movement's analytics campaign
It's a very different future indeed.
your data is controlled by everyone but you, why?
Right now, all your data is in the databases of the tech giants who collect it, like Facebook, Google, Amazon, Spotify, Netflix... the list goes on. It's not quite locked-up, but they don't make it frictionless to get it. So how do we get from here to the good future? Why are we not in that future already?
Why we aren't in the good future:
It’s a pain to reclaim your data
Almost no-one understands what personal data gets collected and how it's used
Most people don't care strongly enough about their personal data - a minority are waking up via Cambridge Analytica and The Social Dilemma, and a smaller minority have been shouting about it for years
Nobody is really in control of what data gets collected or how it's used, nor can they use it themselves.
let’s fix all of the bad things.
To get to the good future, we need to fix all three of those things. We need to:
Help people understand what data is getting collected and who is using it
Demonstrate why it matters, and build a movement of people who want to be in control of their data
Build tools to control what data gets collected and used, and empower people to use it.
we’re trying to but we need your help.
At Ethi (the company I founded with 3 brilliant co-founders), we've built a tool that will fix step 1. It's out in Beta and we think it’s a good start. Our platform helps to demonstrate why your personal data matters, and we're working on improving that every day and adding to it by thinking in public.
We're working on building the movement, but we need help to continue our work. We're full-time on our mission to give as many people as possible the opportunity to understand what’s hiding in their personal data. If you want to support us with money or time, go to ethi.me/support-us.
We’ve now built a tool called FaceErase to help you control what data Facebook keeps about you, by deleting what you don’t want them to keep. We are interoperating with Facebook and Google’s closed systems to help individuals control their data.
sign up, try Ethi, there’s a long journey ahead.
First things first, you need to understand what data gets collected about you, how it's used, and what you can do about it. To do that, go to ethi.me and sign up. Send me a Twitter DM at @michaeljelly or @GetEthi. I’d love to jump on a Zoom call with you for feedback!