Ethics or profit: why not both?
Like criminology, Daphne believes that in many industries, investors and policy makers will eventually find out that big data and AI do not deliver and that more effective, and more humane solutions, will eventually be pushed for. What many investors also do not realise is that most technology companies do not have a healthy business model. Even organisations that we consider to be very successful like Uber, Airbnb, Spotify, Gitlab, and others, are not profitable. In her Tedx talk, Daphne explains how several privacy companies are much more profitable than Uber.

Do you like curly fries?
If you do, you likely have a very high IQ. Does that even make sense? For the Facebook algorithms, it does. While arguably, Big Tech organisations like Facebook and Google make products that are useful, we can’t argue that these organisations bring any progress. Categorising people into very sensitive categories such as religion, sexuality, or ethnicity, based on nonsensical input like one’s preferred shape of fries, should not be considered progress, not to mention the ethical consequences. “Non-discrimination, privacy, and also digital privacy, are human rights as defined by the United Nations. Can organizations who rely on personal data collection ever be respectful of human rights? If not, are these good for our progress?”

Conclusion: privacy is progress!
“If we want societal progress, we have to collect or hand out less personal data. If we do so, we will get more useful innovation, financially healthier business models, more competition in the market and most importantly, more humanity.” For every product offered by Big Tech, there are open-source and privacy friendly alternatives, and we should use them, help to make their code better, and spread the idea that less data and less AI results in real innovation. The future of Big Data will be Zero Data. Share this talk on social media if you want more people to be aware of the privacy topics!