Designing a privacy regime for the age of AI
On Modern Law, Ontario’s Information and Privacy Commissioner Patricia Kosseim talks about aligning our values as a society with laws that will govern the future use of personal information.
It's hard to think of an evolving technology that provokes more anxiety than artificial intelligence, not just because we fear losing our jobs as humans.
We're coming to realize that businesses and state institutions experimenting with AI aren't just dabbling in the latest trend. They're in a race to train algorithms on massive amounts of data – algorithms already reaching into every corner of our lives, from the cars we drive and the social media platforms we rely on to their use in healthcare and our justice system.
Intuitively, we also know that data is not just about cashing in on a consumer-based digital advertising model. It's about power, too, which at first will gravitate towards those best able to collect, interpret and deploy the data. And if history is any guide, power will accrue to the powerful, who will exert a growing influence on how data is captured and managed.
So how should we approach this moment in human and technological evolution? Which values do we want to be reflected in the laws that govern privacy and data use in the age of AI?
To help us think through these questions, we were fortunate to have Patricia Kosseim to join us as a guest on Modern Law. Kosseim is Ontario's Information and Privacy Commissioner. She began her career practising health law, privacy law, and civil litigation. She developed national strategies at Genome Canada and the Canadian Institutes of Health Research, addressing science and technology's legal, ethical and social implications. She also served over a decade as Senior General Counsel at the Office of the Privacy Commissioner of Canada (OPC) and has often advised Parliament on privacy implications of legislative bills. She is also the host of the Info Matters podcast about privacy and access to information.
On the show, we talk about her fears about AI, why we should treat privacy as a fundamental human right, the need to think about future generations when crafting a new regulatory framework and the importance of transparent AI.
You can listen to our whole conversation in the embedded audio below, or better yet, by subscribing to "Modern Law" on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, Google Podcast, and Stitcher.
