**This is a post for a class I am taking. I wanted to share here as I think it could lead to good discussion and contains some class discussion lessons I am developing.**
What are your personal feelings about big data and machine learning?
Are you excited about what the future holds, or do you do your best to keep your personal data as private and secure as possible?
I am excited about what the future holds. The whole concept of privacy combined with big data is a topic that fascinates me immensely. While we can sit and expect the worse from companies and government, I think we have to be more diligent than that. We can sit and complain like many people do in our society about many things or we can equip ourselves, our students, and the future generations to better understand how this technology works so we can play an active role in ensuring equity of voice, ethics of decision making, and advocating for positive use is done. If we want positive change to occur, then we must be the ones to make the positive change happen.
Anytime I read about people worried about their privacy being invaded but carry around a cell phone with them it drives me bonkers. We can’t complain about ads showing up on Facebook based on a conversation we had with friends while also loving Amazon knowing just what we want and delivering it two days later. We also can’t complain about Facebook showing these ads while we use the app itself!
As consumers we have an obligation to stay informed. Whether or not we like it, algorithms are deciding about us all the time and we need to be knowledgeable so we can ensure the data is correct. We are not in control of what all they show to us in our search engines, viewing preferences, ads, and connections. Each decision and click we make further moves us to a narrower window opportunity to persuade us to give attention to the company needing our attention. Just imagine what it can do with this data when it moves beyond making money off our eyes?
Data is so important to our capitalistic society. Big companies give away services for free so they can harvest your data. While things are slowly changing about consumer data such as the California Consumer Privacy Act and the European Union GDPR there are still long strides to be made.
All you have to do is look at your Google user data (you know about this right? Be sure to check https://myactivity.google.com/ as well) and to discover all the data they have about you. Pretty crazy what all they have collected.
Or remember back to 2012 when Target knew a teenage girl was pregnant before her father?
And you might discover some data collected on you is wrong. I learned this when downloading all the data Facebook collects on me. Hopefully nothing serious like criminal activities shows up for you like it has for others, but it is important to be aware. What if this data impacts your job opportunity or credit score? On the flip side I like that Google Maps helps me with where to eat and Waze does wonders for my poor navigation skills. Where do I draw the line? And don’t get me started on all the excellent book recommendations on Amazon.
We need to get a grasp on these concepts. We need to define what we mean by privacy because it means something different to everyone. The idea of cell phone towers knowing your location pretty much at all times and emerging technology on facial recognition software or heck even your fingerprint on your phone is giving more information away about you than you realize.
Remember, you have rights. Your privacy is a right. Remember, nothing is free. Remember, you can easily become a product if you are not careful. However, realize that the things you really love in life (using Alexa to set an alarm or play music) come with a cost of privacy.
Your data can market to you as well as against you. Reading this article reminded me of when I had a non-profit and I knew to serve my STEM camps to grandmothers as they were the biggest market to click and purchase compared to all other demographics. This data came from somewhere(Facebook) and I could use it to my advantage.
Your data is a value to companies like Google, Facebook, and Amazon. According to Arkenea our data is worth about $182 to Google, $158 to Facebook, etc. Take this number and multiply by their user base and you have serious cash!
In closing, if you are worried about privacy then I hope you are working with those who are working for privacy such as Electronic Privacy Information Center, Privacy International, American Civil Liberties Union, Electric Frontier Foundation, and Center for Democracy and Technology to name a few. I hope you are not saying you care, but are doing nothing to protect your privacy like so many that I know.
And if you truly want to protect your privacy, then realize you need to give up many of the tech devices and platforms we use daily. If you want to go rogue and be secure completely, then I encourage you to learn from Kevin Mitnick and read his book, Art of Invisibility, which is a book my father and I have had great conversations around. To be private you need to do a great deal of work and give up many things we love to protect your data.
All of this leads me to a passion area of mine which is teaching and when I think about the following questions:
- How will your personal feelings affect how you present this topic to your students?
- What types of questions do you want your students asking, even if you don’t know the answer?
When I think carefully about how I teach the concepts of privacy, big data, and AI to students based on all that I am interested in learning for my life I can’t help but create another Ethics of AI & CS Topic. I have developed a series on the ethics of CS and AI for teachers to use. I have 24 topics with a goal of reaching 40 topics for one topic a week for an entire school year. Here is the first one published on autonomous vehicles if interested in using. These lessons are kept general by design as each school has different expectations, formats for discussion, etc. If you use them, please share how you used them so other teachers can benefit.
One of the discussion prompts I have developed fits perfect with privacy and big data and it is
How much privacy are you willing to give up for convenience? (Google Maps, Amazon Suggestions, Netflix suggestions, Google Search results)
This is how I would teach this concept. I believe giving students time to explore the information, research, and prepare for a Socratic Seminar or class discussion would be powerful in this context. They need to time to process and form an opinion on this topic. While this concept is nothing new, I believe it would create amazing inquiry that would be a jumping off point to learning more about these topics as they relate to the CSTA standards. We have to get them engaged and seeing how the content connects to their lives. Convenience is a vital element to their lives so I think this question would spur some great insights that would further lead to the content that we want to them to learn. And I would hope it would spur change in mindset to be thinking about privacy and data and to inspire them to have a voice at the table to ensure it does not take advantage of us by our ignorance.
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