Last week, Harvard University computer science professor Margo Seltzer told an audience at the World Economic Forum that privacy as we know it is a thing of the past.
Speaking at the conference in Davos, Switzerland, last Thursday, Seltzer warned of an Orwellian future with DNA-harvesting mosquito-sized robots, operating in an all encompassing surveillance police state.
I’m not kidding!
Seltzer and her co-presenters seemed to feel that this future is inevitable, but they were not necessarily in favor of it. In fact, they actually spoke out against the growing surveillance state and publicly supported fighting against it.
Still, even with calling attention to important issues and supporting solutions, it does seem counter-productive to suggest that a growing surveillance apparatus is unavoidable and unstoppable.
A Part of Life
This may now be a part of our everyday lives, and the surveillance grid may already be in place, but that does not mean that we are powerless to stop it. We always have the power to resist, subvert and find ways around these encroachments on our liberties.
Regardless of that minor philosophical criticism, Seltzer and her co-presenters should be applauded for speaking on these issues at such at such a prestigious conference.
“Welcome to today. We’re already in that world. Privacy as we knew it in the past is no longer feasible… How we conventionally think of privacy is dead,” Seltzer said.
Sophia Roosth, another Harvard researcher that presented at the conference, pointed out this Orwellian future is actually already upon us.
“We are at the dawn of the age of genetic McCarthyism, invasions of privacy are going to become more pervasive. It’s not whether this is going to happen, it’s already happening… We live in a surveillance state today,” Roosth said.
Seltzer also spoke about encryption, saying that end-to-end encryption which could not be intercepted could help the average person keep some kind of privacy in the modern world.
“If bad guys who are breaking laws cannot use encryption, they will find another way. It is an arms race and if governments say you cannot do this, that means the good guys can’t and the bad guys can. End to end encryption is the way to go,” Seltzer said.
During the conversation, Political scientist Joseph Nye weighed in on the topic of encryption, and a recent government push to install back doors in the software or ban it outright. Nye told the forum that governments are talking about putting in back doors for communication so that terrorists can’t communicate without being spied on. The problem is that if governments can do that, so can the bad guys. Are you more worried about big brother or your nasty little cousin?
Privacy for Convenience?
These comments come just over a week after President Obama made a public statement saying that there should be no communication that the government is allowed to unencrypt.
Encryption was one of the many solutions that the researchers discussed at the forum, and they did actually highlight some positive aspects of advancing technology, pointing out that technology is a double edged sword that can be used for both good and terrible things.
Seltzer said that the same technology that is used to create DNA-harvesting robots, can also be used to create disease killing robots that can be sent to infected areas without risking any additional lives.
Unfortunately, not everyone at the forum was as concerned about privacy as the researchers at Harvard.
Anthony Goldbloom, a tech entrepreneur that has massive contracts with NASA, said during a different panel that he isn’t very concerned with privacy, and is willing to give his up for the convenience that technology offers.
“I trade my privacy for the convenience. Privacy is not something that worries me. Anyway, people often behave better when they have the sense that their actions are being watched,” Goldbloom said.
I’m pretty sure that’s one of the dumbest things I’ve ever heard anyone say!
Luckily, not all technology entrepreneurs are blind to the risks posed by weaponized technology.
It was announced recently that technology inventor and entrepreneur Elon Musk, creator of Tesla and SpaceX, will be donating $10 million towards research aimed at steering technology, and specifically artificial intelligence in the right direction. Of course, this donation is in addition to his monumental efforts and accomplishments in clean technology and private space exploration.
This will likely not be the end of Musk’s philanthropy. In a recent YouTube video where he announced his donation to the Future of Life Institute, he said, “There should probably be a much larger amount of money applied to AI safety in multiple ways.”
Albert Einstein was once quoted as saying:
Technological progress is like an axe in the hands of a pathological criminal.
Who is wielding the axe? And who are the pathological criminals?
