Why big tech’s surveillance business model needs to stop

Meredith Whittaker is an outspoken critic of big tech’s track record on gathering and processing user data. The president of encrypted messaging app Signal talks about the “surveillance business model” and how much power companies exert.

According to Meredith, AI “is not some dematerialized technology that exists in the ether. AI is the product of significantly concentrated resources that right now are in the hands of large companies”.

Breaking up this concentration of power requires regulation but this isn’t necessarily best served in the form of legislation due to the effects of lobbying, observes the Signal president.

“I think it’s important to keep in mind that these companies, the large tech companies, at this point in history spend more than Big Oil and Big Tobacco combined on lobbying.”

“They can say ‘we want regulation’ but they have people in Congress every day trying to ensure that they write that regulation. We need other levers that are demanding that whatever is written, that wherever AI is applied, it’s actually beholden to the public will and to the desires and democratic impulses of the people who will be most likely to be harmed by it.”

Naturally, the conversation strays to ChatGPT – the hottest AI topic of 2023 – which Meredith calls a “bullshit engine”. Why? Tune in to find out.

Meredith Whittaker, president of Signal, was in conversation with Michael Isikoff, chief investigative correspondent for Yahoo News, on Center Stage at Web Summit Rio 2023.

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Main image of Meredith Whittaker sitting on stage at Web Summit Rio 2023:Piaras Ó Mídheach/Web Summit (CC BY 2.0)