Meredith Whitaker, head of encrypted messaging app Signal, expressed concern about the AI industry’s reliance on mass surveillance that could control our lives.
of Economic Times Reports At VivaTech, Europe’s leading startup conference, held in Paris, industry players were eager to tout the benefits of their AI products. But Meredith Whitaker, left-leaning CEO of Signal, took a different stance, highlighting the worrying aspects of the technology. In an interview with AFP on Thursday, Whitaker argued that AI tools that crunch numbers, generate text and video, and find patterns in data are heavily reliant on mass surveillance and exert disturbing control over our lives.
In this illustration taken in Brussels, Belgium on Dec. 12, 2022, the ChatGPT website is seen on a mobile device with the OpenAI logo displayed on the screen. (Photo by Jonathan Raa/NurPhoto via Getty Images)
Deepfake Mark Zuckerberg (The Washington Post/Getty)
Whittaker, who worked at Google before helping organize an employee strike over working conditions in 2018, founded the AI Now Institute at New York University in 2017. He now advocates for privacy and criticizes business models that rely on the extraction of personal data. According to Whittaker, the AI technologies currently being debated rely on mass surveillance, requiring vast amounts of data derived from surveillance-based business models that began in the United States in the 1990s and have been the economic driver of the technology industry ever since.
Whitaker said he is not confident about the current direction of the AI industry, pointing to a power imbalance that has resulted from the industry being dominated by “a handful of surveillance giants with little accountability.” He emphasized that most people are not users of AI, but rather employers, law enforcement, governments, and other entities are using AI for their own purposes that do not necessarily benefit individuals or society as a whole.
One striking example Whittaker gave was how AI companies claim to be helping find solutions to the climate crisis. In reality, she argued, they receive funding from fossil fuel companies and their technology is being used to extract new resources. “Of course, where is the revenue? Not in saving the climate. It’s in big contracts with BP, Exxon and other big oil and gas companies,” Whittaker said.
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Lucas Nolan is a reporter for Breitbart News covering free speech and online censorship.
