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BY DR. ANN CAVOUKIAN

My reason for resigning from Sidewalk Labs is only the tip of the iceberg of a much greater issue in our digitally-oriented society.

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The escalation of personally identifiable information being housed in central databases, controlled by a few dominant players, with the potential of being hacked and used for unintended secondary purposes, is a persistent threat to our continued functioning as a free and open society.

Let me explain.

Elon Musk, Bill Gates and the late Stephen Hawking warned us of a potential dystopian-like artificial intelligence that could possibly control society, akin to Skynet in the Terminator.

If they are correct, it will only occur if the AI has access to vast amounts of information, both personal and otherwise. That will only happen if personal data and transactions are centralized and readily accessible.

Although the implication is an artificial agent with malevolent intentionality, humans are innovative, so we must think ahead and place obstacles in the path of such an abhorrent direction. The obstacles to such a scenario, which in turn present great benefits to preserving our privacy, are decentralization, encryption and open-source software.