The alternative to the US and China on AI? ‘Mandatory data sharing’

Personal data is the new oil. A boundless resource that could enable us – for example – to train AI and medical algorithms, understand and treat currently incurable diseases, and much more besides. It is precisely for this reason that Stefan Lorenz Sorgner, a transhumanist philosopher at John Cabot University (in Rome), is calling for a radical reform of the current European management of personal data, a transformation characterised by its transparent and democratic use, in a future scenario with a non-zero-sum outcome in which there are only winners.

When we talk about transhumanism, what generally springs to mind are futuristic speculations concerning mind-uploading – the possibility of ‘uploading’ one’s mind onto a digital medium –, scientific immortality – that is, the possibility of extending human life expectancy indefinitely – and the advent of an AI more intelligent than ourselves. But transhumanism is not just about this; on the contrary, the growing popularity of this philosophy also stems from its ability to address issues relating to our immediate future. This is certainly the case with Sorgner, author of the recent *Euro-Transhumanism. Twisting Truth, Goodness, Beauty* (Bristol University Press).

It all stems from the pressing need to counter the overwhelming dominance of the US and China in data management: ‘To train a reliable AI, we need structured and comprehensive collections of real, personalised digital data. If people can choose not to participate, the data pool becomes fragmented and distorted, rendering it useless for obtaining crucial insights’. Digital data drives 21st-century progress in three key areas: scientific research, evidence-based policy-making and engineering, particularly medical AI. To train AI to detect even the rarest diseases, a comprehensive dataset is essential. Sorgner therefore believes it is necessary to make data sharing compulsory, as China has already done by requiring technology companies to share data with the government. Consequently, ‘China now publishes more peer-reviewed articles than the US, and its economic momentum is set to accelerate’.

“If the EU,” continues Sorgner, “wants to remain competitive, we must abandon the GDPR (General Data Protection Regulation), which is currently stifling our potential.” In the 21st century, personalised digital data – and biometric data in particular – are the new currency of public wellbeing: ‘My proposal is a Social Contract on Data: citizens provide their biometric data to a centralised, democratically governed system. In return, the state guarantees ‘positive freedoms’, such as a universal and hyper-personalised healthcare system, access to cutting-edge medical technologies and a longer healthy life expectancy. Sharing biometric data must become a civic duty.”

At present, within the framework of the ‘surveillance capitalism’ described by Shoshana Zuboff, we hand over our data to private monopolies such as Google or Meta in exchange for trivial benefits such as a free email address. ‘This is a terrible deal. In a democratic framework, data collection would be compulsory, but citizens would be guaranteed absolute transparency.’ For Sorgner, this would be the ultimate safeguard against the ‘digital authoritarianism’ seen in China. By treating data as a public levy, processed primarily by incorruptible algorithms rather than easily compromised human actors, we would ensure that AI is trained on the real-world experiences of all citizens.