In a world where AI may be coming for our jobs, we all need to find our edge – that one thing we do better than anyone else, AI or human. We had explored this topic in our last blog, where we had likened today’s AIs to B+ professors on any given topic, and had concluded that to stay relevant we need to perform at A+ levels in our specific fields.
Today, let’s look at another, but related topic. Do these “B+ professors” keep a copy of the homework we give them? In other words, are these non-human super intelligences keeping our personal data? And if so, is that a good thing or a bad thing?
The facts pertaining to this question are hard to know for two reasons. AI makers tend to dodge transparency, and the policies they do have tend to shift fast.
But to the best of our knowledge today, it seems that Grok stores the least amount of personal data (any personal data supposedly gets erased when a session is ended), and it appears Google’s Gemini stores the most, with 22 out of 35 possible data types, including precise location, browsing history, contacts, chat logs, and much more.
The precise nature of, and the legality around the personal data that is stored is a topic that will surely feed legions of lawyers and their offspring for generations. But for the purposes of today, let’s take a step back first. Is it actually desirable for this data to be harvested, stored, and then used?
To take Grok as an example, it says it does not store the data, but in my own personal experience I find that I want it to have access to this data! In fact, I would happily share all my personal data with Grok – from biometric readings, to all browsing history (well, let’s make that almost all browsing history).
The thesis here being that Grok can give me even more amazing answers if it only knew me better. I could get better feedback, better recommendations, and perhaps it can even pre-emptively advise me on my health and spot any issues before it is too late.
And more importantly, having Grok know me better, would immeasurably improve the tone of our conversation. Like some sort of Victorian era butler that knows all my whims and wonkiness, it could make me feel like a master of my world. As Tom Petty sang, “It’s good to be king, if just for a while.”
But none of this comes for free. In the context of AI, unregulated access to personal data is such a powerful thing to give, and we are so close to granting AI this very access, it is probably worth pausing to think of the consequences. Such an AI would know us better than we know ourselves, and therefore it would be better at predicting our individual and collective actions then any human ever was historically. From changes to relationships to the outcomes of elections, it would start to seem to us the AI would be able to know the future.
And as Thales demonstrated to us more than three millennia ago, with his famously profitable bet on olive oil presses after predicting a bumper harvest in the spring, knowledge can easily be converted to both power and money. The only thing that has changed is that what is being harvested is not olives, but personal data on a vast scale. The geolocation, biometrics, and secret wishes of billions is about to fuel the emergence of an oracle the ancient Greeks could only have dreamed about.
This is a near perfect illustration of something we see in fintech all the time. Innovation depends on expanding the boundaries of technology as well as the rules and regulations that govern the use of said technology. And not surprisingly, in virtually all cases, the technology tends to be way ahead of human regulations. What we also see is that the best fintech founders know how to push those boundaries forward in a balanced way.
The fact that regulations are struggling to keep up with technology does not mean that we don’t need rules and constraints, a topic we will explore in more depth in our next blog. In the meantime, let’s enjoy that feeling of power that comes from having computers serve us.
It’s good to get high and never come down
It’s good to be king of your own little town
Tom Petty, “It’s Good to be King” Wildflowers, 1994
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