Alexis
Hi everyone. Welcome to Talk Tech with Data Dave. I’m not Data Dave. I’m Alexis, your host of this podcast, and I’m here with Data Dave, and today we have a listener question.
Hey Dave, how are you today?
Data Dave
I’m very well, and I’m very excited to have a listener question. This is awesome. So yes, I hope you are well. I hope everything’s going well this year.
Alexis
We have been getting so many listener questions. Before the episode, Dave and I actually sat down and went through a list of listener questions to answer and got to pick which one to record. nd that was so exciting! Everyone, get ready for a whole bunch coming your way.
But today, we have a listener question. Before I go over it, I’m going to start by asking for more. If you have a listener question, please submit it to us at talktech@d3clarity.com. You can also submit it to us on the D3Clarity website or you can send it to Dave or I on LinkedIn. Connect with us. Send it to us on LinkedIn. We would love to hear from you.
The question today came from actually one of your LinkedIn followers, Dave. His name is Victor Muniz. And Victor asked specifically as a follow-up question to one of our recent episodes about AI and data ethics. He said, “Do you think that companies like Microsoft will establish better governance frameworks in the near future?” And I know there’s a lot that we have to unload about that question, but companies like Microsoft, I guess we’re using them as an example. I don’t want us to necessarily call them out specifically. And then, of course, the near future. And then I think this is focused around AI and data ethics, just because it was a follow-up specifically to that question.
So that’s the question. Thanks, Victor, for sending it in. Really appreciate it. And Dave, what do you think?
Data Dave
It’s a very good question. It’s a little bit of a loaded question.
Alexis
Yeah.
Data Dave
My immediate and quick answer is, yes, I do think companies like Microsoft, big tech, whoever, will implement “improved” in quotations and better data governance practices. The longer answer is – the data governance practices are going to continue to evolve and change in the way that people collect and use, distribute, and provide data across the board. The broader question becomes whose responsibility is it to collect and put in the, let’s say, appropriate data governance practices for whatever purpose they are disclosing that the data is going to be useful because we get into ethics, censorship, bias and other things very, very quickly when we talk about that. Especially when we talk about the reflection of data through UI, and the use of data through a UI engine, and the fact that one person’s piece of offensive data is another person’s piece of regular data.
Where do we go in that, and how do we govern that? And whose responsibility is it to govern that? And are these big tech companies content companies or are they technology companies? Are they tools vendors? When they become, to a certain extent, content vendors, then they probably do have a certain amount of responsibility to govern that data.
We went through a lot of this a few years ago, if you remember. There’s all the conversation around censorship on Facebook and censorship on what was then Twitter and censorship in some of these other social media platforms. We’re just adding an AI level to that same conversation to say this data can be reflected with AI. And we’ve got other players, OpenAI, Microsoft, Google, others coming into the fray that need to do this. And if they’re going to collect data. I do think that organizations collecting data should declare the purpose with which they’re going to use the data.
Alexis
There’s a lot of like foundational stuff that you’re talking about here, Dave, that we’ve kind of discussed in other podcasts. So, some of the stuff that you’re talking about is pretty reflective of our conversation with Matt Martinson when we were talking about the User Co-Op and owning your own data that’s going into a web browser. It is kind of reflective of our conversation with Taylor from Eden Data. When we were talking about data privacy and understanding whose responsibility it is to put the data out there.
We talked about these concepts before. And so, I like thinking about it from this scope that you’re putting around it of censorship, because this is a little bit of a different framework or idea than we’ve looked at it before, though. Same concept, different perspective. Thank you.
Data Dave
Yes, you could say that we are responsible for supplying accurate and correct data to anybody that we interact with as individuals, which makes sense. And those organizations that are collecting that data should be responsible for declaring the purpose that they’re going to put that data. That means that we can now provide accurate and correct information that can be used for that purpose.
Remember that correctness is only valid within the context of purpose, within the purpose that you’re going to use it. Otherwise, you’re providing data just on a blank sheet of paper, want of a better phrase, and you don’t know what somebody’s going to use it for. Therefore, you don’t know whether it’s correct or not. You know that it can be accurate in that it describes Alexis, but you don’t know whether you should have hidden some things because you don’t know what the purpose is or whether you shouldn’t have said some things or whatever.
So, we can say that we can go that path. If we are collecting content, then for what purpose are we collecting content? Because alongside censorship is bias, and we say there should be free reflection of information, freedom of speech, whatever grandiose statement we can put on that. But then, as soon as you add censorship, you’re eliminating some freedom of speech. And who is responsible for guarding against slander or whatever side we put on this, or protecting against bias? If I’ve got a platform and a certain number of the community are there that have a set of opinions, is it my responsibility to censor them? Essentially, I think then there has to be this declaration of intent by some of these organizations.
Do I think they’re going to get better at it? Yes. Do I think we as a society are always going to like the answer? No, not necessarily. And certain factions in the society, do we as individuals have a responsibility to make sure our data is accurate, honest, and representative? Yes. We also have a responsibility in society to make sure the data is being used effectively. I’m going to use a loose term of “effectively and appropriately” without being precise on what that means.
Alexis
Okay, I was going to ask you to clarify that, so thank you for not clarifying it for me.
Data Dave
Right. Because I don’t think we can define that. We can define some of it, but that’s a societal question, not necessarily an individual question, because it’s different for everybody.
And we’ve got to find a sensible compromise, not necessarily black or white, because we can’t stop conversations. I don’t think we should stop conversations. That’s my feeling. So, I do believe that there will be better data governance in some of these large organizations. What we should be pushing for is really what does “better” mean? Better data governance in these large organizations probably really means better visibility, better discoverability, and better transparency of the way the data is being collected, used, operated on, and reflected so that we can see it and decide whether our data needs to go into that process or not. So, I’m not sure I want these big organizations to police it, but I want them to give me the opportunity to police it myself.
Alexis
Yeah, that is a really good answer, and I think that’s a good stance to continue to take on this idea and a good piece of advice to give anyone. When we continue to talk about data privacy and data ethics, and what these companies could be doing or are doing, or whatever. I always want to continue to remind our listeners that what’s probably just as important is that we take steps to protect ourselves in these moments when we’re talking about AI and data ethics and we’re talking about our data collection and our data privacy. Remember that you can take the steps to help keep your data private, to keep your data only to the people that you want it, or for the purposes that you want your data being used. And putting that onus back on yourself, and everything that you do is just as important as the large organizations taking responsibility. I’m not saying that the large organizations don’t need to. I’m saying it’s just as important that we do it as well.
Data Dave
Yeah. And it’s the scope of that responsibility. It’s society’s responsibility and the scope of that responsibility to scope where it should lie.
We do have legislation. In Europe, for GDPR and in California, for tight privacy rules and the right to be forgotten. And we need to make sure organizations are following those rules. And if those rules need to be deeper, then we as a society – society need to state that and cause it to happen. And then we can state, “I want to be forgotten,” and hold them accountable to following some of those principles.
“I’m Alexis. I don’t like what you’re doing with my data. I would like you to forget that I ever existed and hold them accountable to that point of view,” and make sure you are deleted in every aspect of their operating. So, they’re not using your metadata, they’re not drawing trends from it, they’re not feeding into AI engines.
“I anonymized it. Therefore, it’s not Alexis anymore.” No, you’re a statistic on a chart, therefore you are swaying the entire chart. That needs to be removed as well. This is a level of data governance to a certain extent and data responsibility that we as a society aren’t used to and the organizations aren’t used to, because we’re saying that to do data governance in this way, we need full lineage, full discoverability, full visibility of the way our data is collected, used, what purpose is being put to, and we’ve got the ability to declare that we don’t like it and you have to take action.
That’s a level of data governance and you’re putting, you know, your million consumers in the forefront of your processes to a certain extent. It’s a nontrivial matter, but that’s the direction I think we should be heading. So, going back to the question, do I think they will improve their data governance practices in the realm of AI? And we can use AI, of course, to help do some of this. Of course, yes, I do think it’s going to improve. I do think this kind of thing is going to improve. I think there’s a slippery slope here. Of course, with anything ethical and with anything around privacy and anything around bias and censorship and that sort of thing, there’s two sides to the story, and there’s going to be controversy around this, et cetera, fragmentation, segmentation, and all sorts of other things that need to weigh in. And we have a responsibility as a society to grow in the way that we use the modern tools for reflecting data, reflecting information.
We’re a gregarious species and have been using and reflecting every form of communication since cave paintings. Some people at the time of the cave paintings probably thought some of them were offensive and should have been censored, and some of them over the years probably have been censored and erased or whatever. So the way I look at it is, that is data, that is information that we as a society are reflecting. And we, as a society, have a responsibility to reflect the data that we want to reflect.
Alexis
Agree.
Well, I hope that answered your question. If that didn’t answer your question, give us another shout out. Ask the question again. Clarify how we didn’t answer the question. We’ll try again. But I think that gave you an answer of where we think companies like Microsoft are headed as far as their governance frameworks are concerned in the near future. But long and short of it, Dave? Yeah, think they are.
Data Dave
I will state that we have no insight into Microsoft or Google or any of these other large tech companies. This is pure speculation on our feelings on this. It’s certainly not a statement of their direction. We’ve got no knowledge or information in that. And if anybody does want to enter into this conversation with us, then drop us a line and come and join us on a discussion and we’ll drill into it in more detail.
Alexis
Yeah, for sure. Always feel free to reach out to us at talktech@d3clarity.com. We would love to talk more about this.
We talked about some kind of deep topics today. We talked about, like, censorship and bias. I think that’s important. I want to put a little CYA disclaimer here at the end that Dave and I are just pointing things out about the larger society. We weren’t really establishing our opinions on this, or things like that. We’re just talking about the big picture here. So don’t yell at us in the comments because we are talking about how society works.
Data Dave
Please don’t hate us for saying this.
Alexis
Yeah, please don’t hate us for repeating what society is saying because we’re a podcast that repeats what society says. Yes. Thank you. Other than that, again, send us more questions. Dave, it’s been awesome. Thanks for joining us. It was a quick episode today, but I think we got to the heart of it, and I think that’s all that matters.
Data Dave
Okay, thank you. Thank you, Alexis. It’s always a pleasure.
Alexis
Awesome.
