'Many teenagers don't even imagine what it's like to live in privacy'

Carissa Véliz says she learns a lot from conversations with her students at the University of Oxford in the United Kingdom, with whom she discusses the value of analogy, personal relationships, and what makes a good life...

She is a professor at the Institute of Ethics in Artificial Intelligence at the institution's Faculty of Philosophy — and is convinced that only by protecting privacy can we keep democracy safe.

The expert fears that many young people, accustomed to growing up without her, do not realize the implications that her absence may have for their future.

Below is the interview that Carissa Véliz gave to journalist Elena Sanz, director of the website The Conversation in Spain.

Elena Sanz - You once commented that privacy is an animal instinct we share with all species, and yet lately, we live as if we can do without it. Are younger generations aware of its importance?

Carissa Véliz - It's difficult to answer, because "young people" are not a homogeneous group: there are important differences depending on where they are born, where they live, and even whether they are men or women.

Lately, I've been quite surprised that my students are more aware of the importance of privacy and less addicted to technology than many adults. Although perhaps my students aren't representative enough of the population.

In general, I am concerned that there are many young people who did not grow up with privacy, who cannot even imagine what it is like to live with privacy and, above all, who do not realize the implications that its absence has for their future.

Sanz - Privacy isn't just a matter of whether or not we're allowed to be seen or known. When companies and governments have access to information about who we are, what we do, whether we're healthy or not, what our political or religious leanings are, or who we're in love with, this has implications.

Véliz - It's true. Mainly because, when you've always lived in a democracy, it's hard to imagine that it's fragile, that it's vulnerable, that it could end if we don't take care of it.

Loss of privacy can restrict your freedom: the freedom to speak your mind, the freedom to associate with whomever you choose, the freedom to protest peacefully. When all of this disappears, people begin to fear what they've said or what they might say, and they end up censoring themselves.

This is already happening in England and the United States, where the privacy of those trying to rent an apartment is invaded: landlords hire data companies to obtain information about potential tenants.

And if they reject you, if they deny you access to housing, you don't need to justify why, you don't need to give a reason.

Sanz - Thus, several of the rights provided for in Article 12 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights are violated, which proclaims that it guarantees the protection of private life, family, home, reputation...

Véliz - Of course. And the most worrying thing is that problems don't arise at the time the data is collected; they usually appear much later.

Furthermore, even when they do arise, it is not easy to establish a direct connection between the moment a piece of data no longer belongs to you and the moment we experience discrimination or exclusion because of that lost data.

Rights are rights precisely because they are essential assets to be protected. And if society lives with an excessively individualistic perspective, we run the risk of losing rights and freedoms.

Sanz - Sometimes, it's the parents themselves who start sharing their children's data before they can decide, without realizing that, in the future, this can have negative consequences for their children.

Véliz - Absolutely. And this makes me think that we all need to be better informed, which isn't easy, because many companies and governments have no interest in disclosing how they process data.

But we must not make the mistake of placing all the responsibility on the shoulders of individuals, who are already overburdened by the current level of bureaucracy and workload, and by the number of demands that our daily lives impose.

Ideally, we would have better products, where everyone would have access to private emails and cell phones that respect privacy.

Sanz - The need to try new things and the attraction to risk are inherent to adolescence. But what about digital risks? Are they taken with the same awareness as, for example, skydiving?

Véliz - Absolutely not. One of the problems with digital life is that it's so new. We don't have enough experience to have visceral reactions of fear to the risks we expose ourselves to. Partly because of its novelty, partly because it's so abstract, and partly because it was designed to be opaque.

When I write a message that appears private on a platform like X (formerly Twitter), but is actually visible to everyone, there is a disconnect between what I'm actually doing and how it feels.

On the other hand, we are biological beings, and if we jump out of a plane, the physical sensation of risk is very tangible. But if someone pushes you to the dark web or sells your data to a particularly irresponsible data broker, there's no physical sensation that alerts you.

Sanz - Can explaining these invisible risks to younger people help them set limits?

Véliz - I think so. I've met many students who avoid sharing certain things because they worry about tomorrow, about having problems in the future when they're looking for a job, because someone saw that photo of them drinking too much or read that nasty comment.

Above all, I would encourage young people to participate in building their own world. It's their world, the world they will live in, and they have the right to build it.

I'd like to see young programmers, dedicated to creating better apps than the existing ones, who don't want to work for Google — but rather create their own company, with a different ethos and without racist or sexist biases.

Sanz - Does digitization imply surveillance?

Véliz - Not necessarily. The way we understand digital, the two are currently inextricably linked. That's why we need to reinvent digital.

Sanz - As you put it, the debate is not technology "yes" or technology "no" — but rather technology "how" and, above all, with what ethics.

Véliz - Indeed, the key is who has power over technology, who controls it, and to what extent it empowers us. An 18-year-old lives in a world where Google has always existed, but the truth is, if we put this into perspective, Google has existed for a microsecond in human history.

New generations must understand that everything is temporary, and that they have the opportunity to change what they don't like.

Sanz - Many social networks and apps constantly offer us personalized content, and this traps us in a kind of aquarium, a bubble where only content that coincides with our way of thinking is displayed, while the rest of reality fades away.

Thus, it seems easier for hate speech and misinformation to triumph.

Véliz - Yes, it's true. But technology doesn't necessarily have to place us in these information ghettos, hence my insistence that young people themselves invent something different, something less personalized. Because everything personalized isolates us from others.

I insist that we are at a time when it is necessary to get involved in the society we have, to become responsible for it, to shape it, to cultivate it, to care for it.

Sanz - And that, from what I understand, goes beyond the creation of new technologies.

Véliz - Yes. And while we might fall into the trap of thinking that, at this moment, with the rise of artificial intelligence, the most important thing for building the future is experimental science, the reality is that this is the time for the humanities.

Because without the humanities, without an understanding of how to govern technology, we may end up worse off than if we hadn't developed this technology.

I recently read in a Financial Times article that companies complain that their employees aren't capable of thinking for themselves. And the disciplines that teach us how to think are, precisely, those in the humanities.

Sanz - I don't know if you followed the debate that recently took place in Spain, with the latest reform of the Education Law, about whether or not to keep philosophy as a mandatory subject, whether it is really useful.

Véliz - That we can even insinuate that philosophy is not useful makes it clear that we are dealing with an incredibly superficial, short-term concept of usefulness, focused only on producing and obtaining results that we can quantify, translate into numbers.

When the truth is, we all have a pretty intuitive idea that the things that matter most in life can't be measured.

Sanz - What message would you send to young people?

Véliz - I would send two.

The first is that this is the perfect time to read. Read everything you can. Read history, philosophy, politics, anthropology. Learn from past generations how they overcame the most difficult moments in their lives.

And read on paper, because the act of reading is an act of defiance against everything that's happening. In other words: no, I'm not going to stay on the computer or on social media; I'm going to read the great thinkers of history.

The second: that life is not digital — but rather, analog... Life is the life of things, of the coffee shop on the corner, the life of your friends, of in-person conversations, of nature, of going for a run.

And the less we rely on digital, the more robust and satisfying this life will be. Digital is a ghost of analog, a second option, one we use when we don't have the option of doing something analog. We talk on Zoom when we can't see each other in person.

*Elena Sanz is the director of The Conversation Spain. Carissa Véliz is a professor at the Institute for Ethics in Artificial Intelligence in the Faculty of Philosophy at the University of Oxford.

This article was originally published on the academic news site The Conversation and is republished here under a Creative Commons license. Read the original version (in Spanish) here.