Surveillance Capitalism In Today’s Digital Age | Fortune Global Forum 2019

Summary

In this dialogue, Shoshana Zuboff discusses the concept of 'surveillance capitalism,' a new market form that exploits private human experience as a commodity. She explains how companies like Google harvest personal data without consent, using it to predict behavior and sell these predictions to businesses. Zuboff argues this model undermines democracy by eroding individual autonomy and creating vast social inequalities. She calls for new laws to criminalize the unauthorized taking of personal experiences and to ban markets trading in human futures, comparing the urgency of this to past regulations that curbed industrial pollution.

Takeaways

• 📚 Shoshana Zuboff's book is described as an expose of the business model that underpins the digital world, focusing on 'surveillance capitalism'.
• 🌐 Surveillance capitalism is a new market form that commodifies private human experience by translating it into behavioral data for AI and machine learning processes.
• 🔄 The core of surveillance capitalism involves taking personal information without individuals' awareness or consent, and then using it to predict future behaviors.
• 🚀 Google is highlighted as a pioneer in surveillance capitalism, initially using 'data exhaust' to improve ad targeting and creating a 'quality score' for click-through rates.
• 🗺️ Popular services like Google Maps are contrasted with the negative externalities of surveillance capitalism, raising questions about the trade-offs users make.
• 🔑 The economic logic of surveillance capitalism compels companies to intervene in user behavior to improve the predictive power of their AI, often without users' knowledge.
• 🧪 Experiments like those conducted by Facebook and Niantic Labs (creators of Pokemon Go) demonstrate how digital platforms can manipulate user behavior for commercial gain.
• 🏙️ The script discusses the broader implications for democracy, suggesting that surveillance capitalism is on a collision course with democratic values and institutions.
• 🛑 Zuboff argues for regulatory changes to interrupt the supply and demand of surveillance capitalism, including making the unauthorized taking of personal experience illegal.
• 🌟 There is a call for a new regulatory vision to reign in surveillance capitalism, reflecting a growing public concern about corporate surveillance and its impact on society.

Q & A

What is surveillance capitalism according to Shoshana Zuboff?

Surveillance capitalism is a new market form born digital that diverges from traditional capitalism by claiming private human experience as a free source of raw material for production and sales, specifically into behavioral data that fills new data supply chains leading to AI and machine learning.

How does surveillance capitalism differ from industrial capitalism?

While industrial capitalism claimed nature and turned it into commodities like land and real estate, surveillance capitalism takes private human experience and translates it into behavioral data to predict future human behavior.

What is the primary product of surveillance capitalism?

The primary product of surveillance capitalism is computational products that predict future human behavior, which are sold to business customers interested in understanding what people will do.

Why did Google become a pioneer in surveillance capitalism?

Google was the first and best at taking personal data without permission or awareness and translating it into data for creating quality scores that improved click-through rates, which became the first globally successful prediction product.

How does surveillance capitalism bypass human awareness?

Surveillance capitalism operates by taking personal information and experiences without individuals' knowledge, translating it into data, and using it to predict behavior without their awareness.

What are the negative externalities associated with surveillance capitalism mentioned by Shoshana Zuboff?

The negative externalities include the erosion of human autonomy and agency, the creation of new zones of experimentation like Facebook's emotional contagion studies, and the development of behavior modification techniques such as those seen in Pokemon Go.

How does surveillance capitalism impact democracy according to the transcript?

Surveillance capitalism is on a collision course with democracy, eroding it from below by targeting human autonomy and restructuring it from above through extreme concentrations of knowledge and power.

What is the role of AI and machine learning in surveillance capitalism?

AI and machine learning are used as computational factories that process behavioral data to produce prediction products about future human behavior, which are then sold in markets trading human futures.

What does Shoshana Zuboff suggest should be done to regulate surveillance capitalism?

Zuboff suggests that laws are needed to interrupt the supply and demand of surveillance capitalism, making the unauthorized taking of personal experiences illegal and outlawing markets that trade in human futures.

How does surveillance capitalism use economies of action?

Economies of action refer to the use of digital architecture to intervene in human behavior without awareness, pushing it in directions that serve the companies' bottom lines and the interests of their business customers.

What is the significance of the Toronto Waterfront project in the context of surveillance capitalism?

The Toronto Waterfront project, involving Sidewalk Labs/Google/Alphabet, is significant as it represents the expansion of surveillance capitalism into urban planning and the potential for behavior modification on a large scale.