How privacy can save your life _ Carissa Véliz _ TEDxPorto

Privacy is important because it protects us from possible abuses of power. That makes it essential for both personal freedom and democracy. Without privacy, fundamental pillars of democracy like investigative journalism, attorney-client privilege, and fair elections fail. In this talk, Carissa Véliz shows that, given how we have designed the digital, to digitize is to surveil. Technology is not neutral, and neither is digitization. The very act of turning what was not data into data is a form of surveillance. To digitize is to make taggable, searchable, and trackable that which was previously off the record. And what is it to track if not to surveil? Surveillance leads to control, and societies of control end up undermining freedom. How we are building AI, with troves of personal data, and with the capacity to sift through data always on, is an ethical choice. Ubiquitous personalized AI chatbots are further eroding our privacy and threatening with ever more efficient mass surveillan