Data and ‘AI’
Harm to children and families caused by the ‘database state’ approach to government is reaching boiling point, amplified by the government’s ambitions to be global leaders in data and AI.
Arguments for increased storage and sharing of children’s information claim it is needed for safeguarding but there is little acknowledgement of the significant negative impacts and a lack of transparency about corporate interests driving this.
Human rights and the well-being of children, their families and communities must be our guiding principles, not the pursuit of profit or growth.
“…there are growing concerns in the academic and policy communities that our trust in public services with respect to children’s data is misplaced…”
“Rather than the state being accountable to its citizens, the datafied welfare state is premised on the reverse, making citizens’ lives increasingly transparent to those who are able to collect and analyse data, at the same time as knowing increasingly little about how or for what purpose that data is collected.”
UK ‘AI’ bubble
The focus on AI from the UK government has been on the value of the market and financial opportunities that the personal information and data of citizens brings. The Labour government, just like the Conservative government, have been focused on the profit and how potentially lucrative this market could be. They are rushing through legislation called the Data (Use and Access) bill which – as the name suggests – is about how companies and the government can access our data rather than about our protection.
“…we don’t want any of the problems of our inheritance misting up the shop windows of Britain, distracting you from all those assets I just listed.”
“[AI] is a game changer that has massive potential on productivity and driving our economy and we need to run towards it.”
“Labour cannot continue to advance the hype of Silicon Valley and Big Tech in the face of mounting evidence of real-world harms caused by applications of AI and automated systems.”
Dr Georgia van Toorn, Professors Joanna Redden and Lina Dencik and Jess Brand
Transforming Society: Labour’s AI vision: Can technology really end poverty? (2024)
“…we see the influence of corporate lobbying…to the extent that the majority of proposals seem directly or indirectly to help business interests at the expense of individual data protection rights.”
No consent
The government is rushing through legislation that will weaken our data protection rights and open the floodgates for dangerous uses of so-called ‘artificial intelligence’. We haven’t agreed to it. Many don’t even understand what is being done and used already but when they do understand they care a lot.
There is low public confidence in the government’s handling of our data. When plans for our health data to be shared came to light there was mass refusal to share data and worry has increased now US firm Palantir are involved.
No mandate: nobody
consented to this!
“The datafication of families has
been pursued quickly and quietly, with a largely privatized digital infrastructure becoming embedded within local governance frameworks before any sustained objections could be mounted.”
Professors Val Gillies and Ros Edwards and Dr Helene Vannier Ducasse
Calibrating families: Data behaviourism and the new algorithmic logic (2024)
Data harm
The current Labour government is claiming – exactly as the Conservative government did before them – that it is for the good of all that authorities have access to anything they want to know about children and their families. They are claiming too – again, exactly as did the Conservative government – that ‘artificial intelligence’ is a great thing for us all.
This is to ignore all of the evidence to the contrary and the harm it will do to us all, including to the most marginalised and vulnerable in our society.
“…a machine learning political order actively profits and learns from the fracturing of communities and the destabilising of democratic rights.”
Professor Louise Amoore
Review of International Studies: Machine learning political orders (2021)
“At the same time that UK political parties vie in their condemnation of the Post Office scandal, they unite in their promotion of AI as the answer to tricky social problems. This means that, in effect, they are arguing for more of the same; for more occasions where computing and bureaucracy combine to mangle the lives ordinary people, but scaled by AI in ways that make Horizon’s harms look like small beer.”
- Transfer of power away from the people
Big data and AI gives the state more power over citizens but it also gives a lot of power to unaccountable companies.
- Increases inequality yet further
Puts existing bias and inequality on an automated – and therefore even larger – scale
- Loss of privacy
AI is data hungry and satisfying its needs means serious loss of privacy.
- Budgets used to police people rather than support
There are much more positive things that could be done with this money.
- Loss of our protections
Two Bills going through Parliament currently pose a serious and significant threat to children and their families data protection.
- Resource and energy hungry
Machine learning and big data need huge amounts of resources and energy at a time when children’s futures are at threat from climate breakdown
“the use of risk scores offer a substitute to designing socially just services and thwart government’s duty towards the fight over social inequalities.”
“The measures which are taken to supposedly deal with a student at risk can become a kind of self-reinforcing feedback loop with potentially lifelong consequences.”
Dr Dan McQuillan quoted
Dr Dan McQuillan, Professors Juliane Jarke
and Teresa Cerratto Pargman
Postdigital Science and Education: We Are at An Extreme Point Where We Have to Go All in On What We Really Believe Education Should Be About (2023)
Data dangers: how children
and families are hurt
‘AI’ is not all that
“AI is just math. Computers are really good at solving mathematical issues. But they are not good at solving social issues, yet they are being applied to social problems.”
Professor Meredith Broussard
MIT Technology Review: Meet the AI expert who says we should stop using AI so much (2023)
“The risks and harms have never been about “too powerful AI”. Instead: they’re about concentration of power in the hands of people, about reproducing systems of oppression…”
Professor Emily Bender
Policy makers: Please don’t fall for the distractions of #AIhype (2023)
“Much of what’s being sold as “AI” today is snake oil. It does not and cannot work.”
Big data, bad decisions:
‘AI’ can’t understand people
‘AI’ hype: marketing myths are dangerous
Public sector ‘AI’ fails: lives ruined