In this conversational excerpt, John C. Havens emphasizes that AI systems are deeply intertwined with the data they ingest, which is often collected without genuine, meaningful consent. He critiques the language of "harvesting" data and explains how privacy frameworks such as the EU GDPR, California Consumer Privacy Act (CCPA), and the UK Age‑Appropriate Design Code shape—or fail to shape—data practices, especially for children whose age thresholds have been lowered from 13 to as young as 4. Havens cites real‑world examples, including eye‑tracking in apps and a German case where a Barbie doll recorded children’s speech, to illustrate the invasive nature of data collection. He argues that much of AI development is driven by advertising and consumerism, turning personal data into a commercial commodity while legal mechanisms keep individuals from accessing their own data. Finally, he discusses the complex question of AI legal personhood, noting that AI is owned by corporations with extensive intellectual‑property rights, making it inappropriate to consider AI as an autonomous entity with rights. The overall tone is conversational yet critical, expressing concern about the ethical, legal, and societal implications of current AI data practices.
Chapters
I really want to— really critical to point out again, AI does not live in isolation. And I say this as respect to the machines and the code and the engineers who I work with every day. Blake, to your work, et cetera, is like, it's not like this is an AI in one sense, right? There's AI in this phone. The data from this phone from me is tracked. And again, here's where I wanna be clear. To use pejorative terms like harvest, right? That's a very specific term that makes the acquiring of the data negative. In terms of GDPR, how people allow their data to be used. When I say genuine meaningful consent, and I've worked in this space, I work with many of the world's leading thinkers around the world in data and cybersecurity, I still wanna use the internet. So I click accept, accept even after GDPR. There's things like the California Data Privacy Act, the Age Appropriate Design Code, which means for instance, can children, used to be age 13 in something called COPPA, It used to be 13 years old that kids, young people could get onto Facebook and the logic being if they didn't, then they had to ask their parents, can I sign? Here a lot of the logic is, I believe, about communication. Parents and children, I'm not here to tell them what to do, but there's a delineation. Should kids at a certain age be tracked and what can be tracked, right? So the reason now the Age Appropriate Design Code in the UK by Baroness Beebin Kittram got started is that age went from 13 to 6. To 5 to 4. And the data that was tracked with young people was not just, do I like Snuffleupagus showing my age, or do I like whatever. It was, were the eye tracking happening? How fast are they moving their fingers? There's a famous case in Germany where Barbie doll, the recording, the audio recording happened of what the kids were saying. Now here the point is that, again, how human data is tracked there's still so much disorganization with what goes into any AI. So, you know, the thing is, when even we say, what does that AI— is that AI conscious? Depending on the program and how it was built and where it was built and who built it, in one sense you're asking kind of a Borg question. And here I'm showing my Star Trek side of things. An AI that's built on the aggregated data of a myriad of humans taken without their genuine meaningful consent, meaning there's an obfuscation on the business side for us all to click and buy. I, I buy stuff all the time. But the point being that if we want to get into consumerism and all that, like the whole growth mentality of the system where AI, a lot of it drives what we do, it's focused on advertising and we buy things. That's not wrong, but it's a small part of who we are as humans. Until we have full access to our data, those beautiful machines— I mentioned that chapter with my son— I want to be able to have this conversation and go, that machine was built in sort of a pure way where the data was accessed in a way that makes sense. Legally, humans don't have access to our data. In the States, I can point to dozens of times where you try to get access to your data, certain companies, the Sunlight Foundation, lobbyists from every major company in Silicon Valley, and there's like billions of dollars every year to keep people from even accessing their data. So that's a huge part of the conversation legally. The other thing really quickly is just to say AI is having legal status. It's not just the designer, it's the company supporting the intellectual property. There's a fleet of incredibly talented people building an AI. So to say, should the AI have rights? Please, we can't keep that in isolation. It's not like, and this is a vast difference from a human and a machine, at least right now, humans are born to one person in a very specific context. Machines and algorithms typically are built by companies with dozens of smart people, with lawyers, and the companies have the intellectual property that the humans don't. So we can't just have this conversation kind of out of context, like an AI just appears and there's Bob the AI.
