AI Assemblages and Data Ownership

We have crossed the human/machine divide. We have migrated into the infosphere. Its ubiquity depends on how much we accept its digital nature as fundamental to our reality. What matters most is not the AI assemblages and algorithms but the fact that the very fabric of reality is changing.

Previous revolutions have happened without foresight and have had lasting ethical implications. The upheavals of the past have been understood in terms of wealth creation, but this one can only be understood in terms of a reconceptualization of ourselves. For this reason alone, the infosphere revolution will be more dramatic. The synthetic is partly real, and the real is enmeshed with artificial life.

The information society is one in which data is the new digital gold, and the purest source of added value, not the caravans of raw materials of the old Silk Roads. Previous revolutions in the creation of wealth in particular the agricultural and the industrial, led to large-scale transformations in our architectural environments and social and political structures. The present revolution demands environmental ethics for the whole infosphere. The Algorithmic Accountability Act in the US empowers the FTC to probe citizen-facing digital services, and automated decision systems with delegated authority for bias, privacy, and security risks.

Already, a continuous stream of data flows from an electric vehicle tracking the cell health of the battery, vehicle performance, charging stations visited, some Personally Identifiable Information (PII), and payment details. This data moves continuously into data centres or cloud storage systems. The EV ecosystem is paved with data. You can own an EV, but not the data.

Data and information ownership is dealt with by Intellectual Property law, not Data Protection Regulation. Data protection law establishes the parameters for lawful personal data use. However, it by-passes issues of ownership. To avert the overconcentration of wealth and power in the hands of the opulent during the infosphere revolution we must regulate data ownership. This is the key to wealth creation during the infosphere revolution.

Unregulated AI systems can amplify societal biases. As AI systems become more complex and autonomous, it is important to establish mechanisms for accountability and transparency. Malevolent actors can exploit AI assemblages for cyberattacks, misinformation, disinformation, and surveillance. All of this is important but it leaps over the data ownership issue. Data ownership is the key. The data ownership terrain is an open savannah.

The UK General Data Protection Regulation sets out the rules for handling personal data. However, “ownership” is sometimes included in the meaning of having “control” over the data. With its proclamation citizens of the UK are proactive in seeking explanations about how institutions and companies use their personal data and for what purposes.

The phrase “my personal data” gives rise to the notion of “ownership” of this information, which is not a question to which data protection regulation has the answer. The UK GDPR outlines the guardrails related to the protection of citizens concerning the processing of personal data, as well as the rules related to the free movement of personal information. Moreover, the definition of personal data doesn’t suggest that personal data belongs either to the data subject or the organization or institution refining or combining it with unrelated data to make new data.

It is the controller’s responsibility to show they have a lawful basis to use it. However, the principle of accountability has no relation to ownership. Controllership does not robotically bring ownership. Data and information ownership is an issue that is given primacy in Intellectual Property (IP) law.

History shows that there has always been an intertwining of assets and political struggles, resulting in the polarization of societies. In the past, land was the most valuable asset. When land was the most valuable asset, the political struggle was to control vast acreage. This separated society into aristocrats and peasants.

In examining land policy, administration, and management in the Anglophone Caribbean at the Trinidad Hilton, (March 19-21, 2003), Professor Jean Besson, a Senior Lecturer in Anthropology at Goldsmiths stated that the process of colonial acquisition of Indigenous territories, the reception of European land law and the blossoming of official land tenure regimes designed to restrict land-ownership and prevent the growth of a peasantry, served to guarantee the continued generation of wealth among the bourgeoisie in both the pre- and post-Emancipation eras.

With the Industrial Revolution fuelled by the Transatlantic Slave Trade, machines and factories superseded land as a valuable asset. Political struggles shifted to include labour and capital.  When the machines became concentrated in the hands of a few who owned fabric mills and dockyards, societies split into capitalists and proletarians. This also resulted in the deindustrialization of existing foreign markets. Successful merchants in old markets suddenly became penniless.

Today, the most valuable asset is data. The political struggle is data ownership, and society will be separated into the elite above the AI assemblages, and the piece and gig workers below the machines. The new politics will be about the flow of data and its ownership. In the Age of AI assemblages, it is data that will eclipse land, machinery, factories, entrepreneurship, and capital as the most important asset.