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You can get most of the social benefits without throwing away the notion of privacy. In the West, all sorts of data are already available to those with legitim
by ldp01 9y ago
You can get most of the social benefits without throwing away the notion of privacy.
In the West, all sorts of data are already available to those with legitimate interests. Traffic data is used to optimise city planning; police can track your phone, with a warrant; power networks read your smart meter and so on. The key difference to the situation described in the OP is that there are controls around it.
In terms of reaping the benefits of AI, a willingness to discard privacy isn't as important as building the capability in data collection, warehousing, analytics, and so on. A lackadaisical attitude to privacy such as handing everything over to the private sector will just make it easier to commit all sorts of crimes: identity theft, blackmail, stalking, etc. Rather than a structural advantage to the Chinese system, it sounds more like technical (legal?) debt that may take years to pay back once it's acknowledged that privacy controls actually have a legitimate purpose.
- rm_-rf_slash 9y agoDevils advocate here: by stripping away privacy controls and monitoring every bit and byte on the Chinese internet, the government would also have an easier time identifying and tracking down blackmailers, stalkers, etc. As for the likelihood that these un-safeguarded powers will be abused for personal or political gain, well, like you said, technical/legal debt.
- lovich 9y agoHaven't we already kinda thrown away privacy? Yes the police can track your cell phone with a warrant, but many times they've been shown to use stingrays instead. On top of that we have the snowden revelations showing that all our communication is tracked by the government. We appear to currently have the worst of both worlds where the privacy is gone but it's mostly being used for purposes that are against our interests.