An important position paper from the Federal Trade Commission about AI:

You may have heard that “data is the new oil”—in other words, data is the critical raw material that drives innovation in tech and business, and like oil, it must be collected at a massive scale and then refined in order to be useful. And there is perhaps no data refinery as large-capacity and as data-hungry as AI. 

Companies developing AI products, as we have noted, possess a continuous appetite for more and newer data, and they may find that the readiest source of crude data are their own userbases. But many of these companies also have privacy and data security policies in place to protect users’ information. These companies now face a potential conflict of interest: they have powerful business incentives to turn the abundant flow of user data into more fuel for their AI products, but they also have existing commitments to protect their users’ privacy….

It may be unfair or deceptive for a company to adopt more permissive data practices—for example, to start sharing consumers’ data with third parties or using that data for AI training—and to only inform consumers of this change through a surreptitious, retroactive amendment to its terms of service or privacy policy. (emphasis in original)…

The FTC will continue to bring actions against companies that engage in unfair or deceptive practices—including those that try to switch up the “rules of the game” on consumers by surreptitiously re-writing their privacy policies or terms of service to allow themselves free rein to use consumer data for product development. Ultimately, there’s nothing intelligent about obtaining artificial consent.

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