Personal

Don’t be mistaken. I am not saying I support what happened.

On this, I would be more worried in case they sell our travelling and spending record to a third party – so that they could design personalized advertisement for each of us.

The most horrifying scenario of this kind appeared in the movie Minority Report: As soon as a woman passes by a LCD screen in the street or underground station, a voice appears to address her, followed by showing her some advertisement that would presumably be of her interest.

You think the idea too far fetched and our technology has not advanced that far? Quite the opposite. The best example within our reach - both in terms of distance and the time axis - is personalized medicine.

What I mean is: At this moment, simple artificial intelligence could advise against the use of some medicine (for example, penicillin) in some specific patients - based on their history of allergic reaction. You may know that certain genetic polymorphism in our DNA would preclude the use of certain drugs (notably carbamazepine, and, more recently, allopurinol) because the risk of severe skin reaction is very high. With time, computer could design specific treatment for each of us - based on the genetic as well as behavioural information.

That sounds great, eh? The catch is: making an individualized advise of this kind inevitably involves a lot of personal information - a database that is exceptionally attractive, not only to business people, but more so to any potential dictator. (For example, how about knowing your political opponent has a genetic predisposition to alcoholism ?)

In short, a personalized treatment always involves a privacy problem.