Privacy and AI: what if transparency applied to those who use our data too?

To me, privacy is a shield, a sort of invisibility cloak. But how much does it really protect us today?

My experience

I’ve worked at companies where public social media data was collected and resold. Seen from the inside, the shield looks a lot thinner than we think.

I already wrote about this in Privacy makes you a liar, and this video picks up that thread.

An uncomfortable hypothesis

If privacy is shrinking, transparency should also apply to whoever uses our information. Knowing who takes it, how, and what they do with it.

And then changing the intent: moving from shield to collaboration, using what we know about each other to help rather than to hurt.

The risk

I don’t think it’s simple. The risk I see, with increasingly powerful AI tools, is that a few people end up knowing everything about everyone. I’m interested in figuring out whether we can imagine a different direction.

In the description of the video (it’s in Italian) there’s also a link to the presentation I started from. Tell me what you think!