Opinion Artificial Intelligence Is Too Important to Leave to Google and Facebook Alone

Our proposal has three components: The first is a public data pool that would make data accessible to registered users. Local, state and federal governments have sizable data resources that would seed this digital commons. Users would be verified to block foreign governments, hackers and others with ill motives from access, and users would be prevented from using the data to engage in racial or other forms of discrimination and for microtargeted advertising. Some of the data may be very sensitive, and access to those resources would be highly regulated. We can imagine a variety of ways that regulation and technology together could protect privacy and still foster innovation: Data could be anonymized at the source; the commons could have an interface that allowed users to derive insight from the data set, while leaving the underlying information inaccessible; less sensitive data, like weather information, could be made available in a format optimized for training A.I. What's more, methods for safely sharing A.I. models without disclosing the underlying data are being developed today and could enable users of the data commons to collaborate on public-interest A.I. services.