Artificial Intelligence and Privacy

Modern Artificial Intelligence (AI) technologies have a rapidly growing impact on a wide range of human activities. AI methods are being used in varied domains such as healthcare, material science, infrastructure engineering, social media, surveillance technologies, and even artistic expression. They have been used for the purposes of drug discovery via protein folding prediction, power usage optimization through reinforcement learning, and facial recognition by means of image segmentation. Their effectiveness and wide-scale, unregulated deployment within our societies pose significant risks to our fundamental rights. Multiple existing AI methods have the potential to profoundly undermine our ability to safeguard our privacy. The societal impact of such AI models can be investigated through six concentric Heuristic Zones of privacy. These AI models can perform inferences regarding highly sensitive, personal information such as race, gender, and intelligence from seemingly innocuous data sources beyond the capabilities of human experts. They are capable of generating increasingly accurate text and image recreations of our thoughts from non-invasive brain activity recordings such as magnetoencephalography and functional magnetic resonance imaging. Furthermore, prospective AI technologies pose concerns about the existential risk to our civilization which extend beyond the erosion of privacy and other fundamental human rights.