Should We End the Data Economy?

Google and Facebook became multibillion-dollar juggernauts by stockpiling data and using it to sell advertising. Governments can now track their citizens en masse. Where will this “surveillance capitalism” lead?

Dr. Carissa Véliz from the Institute for Ethics in AI at the University of Oxford joins Azeem Azhar to consider what’s wrong with the data economy, and to explore her bold proposals for ending it.

They also discuss:

• Why Google’s founders were initially opposed to selling ads.
• Why privacy legislation stalled after 9/11.
• How personalized content fractures the public sphere.
• How the Nazis used population data to identify victims.
• Why we should ban trading in personal data.

Further reading:

• “Surveillance Capitalism with Shoshana Zuboff” (Exponential View podcast, 2019)
• “Privacy matters because it empowers us all” (Aeon, 2020)
• “Digital privacy — can we reclaim it?” (Financial Times, 2020)
• “You’ve heard of tax havens. After Brexit, the UK could become a ‘data haven’” (The Guardian, 2020)

@carissaveliz
@azeem
@exponentialview

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About Exponential View:
Welcome to Exponential View, where Azeem Azhar examines how exponential technologies such as AI are reshaping the future. Each week, Azeem shares his analysis or speaks with an expert guest to shed light on frontier shifts across technology, business and society.

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