Broadcast Retirement Network’s Jeffrey Snyderdiscusses the right to privacy and data security with International Telecommunication Union’s Olivier Alais.
Jeffrey Snyder, Broadcast Retirement Network
Joining me now is Olivier Alais from the International Telecommunication Union and the Harvard Kennedy School. Olivier, so great to see you. Thanks for joining us this morning.
Thanks a lot for inviting me, talking to you. Yeah, this is good. And like I said, in the green room, if I could speak to you in French, I would do that.
But unfortunately, I don’t remember my French very much. So let’s talk about artificial intelligence and data privacy. As you know, and as you’ve written about, the world has shifted.
AI is being integrated into virtually everything that we do, from manufacturing to teaching to medical research. But you and others have expressed concern about maintaining our privacy, sir.
Olivier Alais, International Telecommunication Union
Yeah, today we have a concern about privacy in AI governance. It is real. And privacy, it is a fundamental human right, something that we need to get.
It’s not missing that. It’s coming from the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. It was in 1948, saying no one shall be subject to arbitrary interference with his privacy.
So it is something that we decided 80 years ago, and now it’s eroding in the digital world. And the rule, the simple rule that we have in the physical world, like I’m not going to go to your house if you are not entertaining me. I am not going to drive your car, you know.
It’s something that we are not really able to respect in cyberspace. And so when we are talking about privacy in the digital world, it’s really trying to do the translation. So take the different human rights that we are about privacy and trying to do a translation in technical terms.
It’s what we are trying to do at ITU. It is a consensus that we are trying to build between member states. It’s really to build these translations.
How we are going to take a legal framework and translate it into technical terms and then to embed privacy and other human rights into the design of technical standards. And when we are able to be at the standard level, that means you are also going to be able to be at the emerging technology level. So it’s where privacy is key.
And it’s going to be, and it’s starting to be more and more challenging in AI, as you asked me, because right now, big tech companies building the AI, they are not regulated. So it’s really in the different governments that they are building a government. And we saw that with the Antropik case between Antropik and Pentagon two weeks ago, where Antropik tried to step back from the Pentagon because the Pentagons were asking their technology to do mass domestic surveillance.
And they said, oh, it’s something that could be problematic for us. But in that case, it is a CEO from a big tech company taking the decisions. It is not governance.
It is not right. You know, it is a difficulty. So we need to build a proper governance around privacy and AI governance in general.
Jeffrey Snyder, Broadcast Retirement Network
So, you know, it’s privacy and the thesis of what you wrote. There’ll be a link below in the show. But the thesis is that it’s a human right.
I would tend to agree that I want to maintain my privacy. But you also state that, you know, the governments need to protect that. So the question is, are we that far behind?
Are governments that far behind in regulating AI? It seems like they are so. It depends on which government we’re talking about.
Let’s use the American government. Let’s use the French government. I think a lot of governments probably are behind on this, but maybe you disagree.
Olivier Alais, International Telecommunication Union
No, no, no. I guess in Europe, we are maybe more in advance in governance because we are not producing. We are consuming technology.
We are mainly consuming technology from the U.S. and from China. And we have tech companies, but they are not the big tech that you have in the U.S. So that means that we have a kind of obligation to build strong regulations. Because when a foreign company are coming with their technology, they are also coming with the regulation.
It’s the case with Anthropique and the Pentagon. So there is a negotiation on the regulations. And if you are outside the tables, you are not going to build the proper regulations.
In the U.S., it is a big difference because at the federal level, you don’t have the federal law about privacy and data protections. One of the ideas for that is to try to protect the innovations. Okay, it’s interesting to protect capitalism and innovation, but we also need to protect the citizens.
And in the U.S., you don’t have a strong law, strong legal framework to do that protection. So it’s mainly going to be civil society organizations working on this in the U.S. I’m thinking the Electronic Frontier Foundation, for example, is one of the strong civil society organizations that you have in the U.S. and trying to protect the citizen rights concerning privacy.
Jeffrey Snyder, Broadcast Retirement Network
So it sounds like, as usual, we’re kind of trailing things here, at least when it comes to maintaining privacy. I understand why these businesses want access to the data. It helps them formulate better models.
It helps them deliver better services. In the last minute and a half that we have, as citizens, what can we do? I mean, did we go to our local congressperson?
Did we go to other state representatives to try to advocate to build out this framework further?
Olivier Alais, International Telecommunication Union
Yeah, it’s something that you need to go to your public representative, so it can be in a parliament. But just to understand, it’s something that we already have been able to regulate, for example, the tobacco industry, the fast food industry. We have been able also to regulate nuclear weapons.
So it’s something that we know how to do it. What we need to do, what we are missing today, it is a political will. And we need to have this political will.
And we need to come, certainly, from the awareness from citizens, you know, and asking to the government, we want to have better data protection. We want to have better privacy. Because all the big tech companies, and most of them, they are extracting the data.
They are extracting data from the people to create a dependency. And the more they are creating a dependency, the more they are going to extract data. It’s always the big tech companies are working.
And we have been able, as I said, to regulate the tobacco industry. Why are we not being able to regulate the digital industries?
Jeffrey Snyder, Broadcast Retirement Network
Yeah, well, certainly, I think there’s a lot of work. I think as we continue to go down this road of artificial intelligence, as you stated, we’re going to keep uncovering these issues. The question is, how quickly can we regulate or do we need to regulate?
As I said earlier, I personally don’t want my likeness, my image, my sound, my voice, or any of my data given to anybody, unless I approve it. Olivier, we’re going to have to leave it there. Thanks so much for joining us.
Great piece. And we look forward to having you back on the program again very soon, sir. Thank you.
Olivier Alais, International Telecommunication Union
Bye-bye.