Will We Have to Relinquish Some Privacy for the Best AI? – The Motley Fool

Social media giant Meta Platforms, formerly known as Facebook, is only the latest company to draw legal heat over its technology -- specifically, its artificial intelligence (AI) innovations. In this episode of "The AI/ML Show" on Motley Fool Live, recorded on Feb. 16, Fool.com contributors Toby Bordelon and Jason Hall discuss how the debate of AI versus privacy continues to rage on.

Toby Bordelon: We talked about data protection and privacy, I think, a decent amount with Facebook, and you can see what happens when that goes badly. If you don't follow those rules, $650 million with maybe more to come, and that can put a damper on what you can do. You want data to train AI well. You want data to be free-flowing, but then how does that work with our existing laws? Do we need to change them? Do we as a society need to get to a point where we say, you know what, we have to just allow use of personal data or it's not going to get us to where we want to be. We don't have to do that. It's a choice to be made. But there are trade-offs each way.

Jason Hall: It's like somebody refusing to not use cash or write checks. You can, but you're also unable to participate fully or easily in the way that most people do commerce.

Bordelon: I think with AI, too, there's a level beyond that. Because if say, Jose says, "I don't want my data being used to train this AI, I don't want it to be used at all." Does that impact how good the AI is, and does that impact my experience with the AI? Where is that line? It's not a new debate. It's a classic debate about where does individual rights end and communal rights begin, or what are you required to give up as an individual to live in the communal society. We've been having that debate...

Hall: As long as there's been a society.

Bordelon: Thousands of years. Exactly, and this is just another iteration of that, that we need to have a conversation around and struggle with, I think. You think about pace of innovation, which you touched on, Jason. The innovation in this field gets ahead of the law. We see when we have that a little bit with Facebook, but what ends up happening is that courts decide issues without a great legal framework because it's an issue of first impression. They have never seen it before. They are being asked to interpret existing laws that were written before the technology exists, and they have to wing it. That's not awesome. As a society, I don't think we want judges being forced into making decisions that have particularly billion-dollar impacts, and real impacts on people's lives using 30-year-old laws.

Hall: Using 30-year-old laws that weren't written to apply to a thing that didn't exist, and having no basis for understanding what they're ruling on.

Bordelon: Right. People yell at judges for getting that wrong, but that's unfair to put them in that position to begin with, I think. The laws just have to keep up. We have to find a way to anticipate things better, I think, not always react with our legislation, so that when things come up in the court, the judge can say, "OK, I have been given a framework by legislatures, with which I can work to try to find a resolution dispute." I've been saying I'm going to use a framework that's 50 years old because that's all anyone's given me. That's what the law is. We're just going to go with it and make the best of it we can. That's not the best way to do things. But that's kind of where we fall into a lot of technology, including AI. That's got to be addressed at some point.

The rest is here:

Will We Have to Relinquish Some Privacy for the Best AI? - The Motley Fool