I had just started my master’s degree in artificial intelligence when a classmate asked if I’d heard of Amazon, a new online bookstore where you could order basically any book in the world and have it shipped to your front door. Feeling all the excitement of a middle school book fair flooding back, I entered the world of Amazon.com and ordered a beautiful book. It felt revolutionary and futuristic but still cozy and personal.
” Privacy and free will are inextricably intertwined: Both rest on being left to decide who we are, what we want and when we want it without anyone watching or interfering. Privacy is good for our mental health and good for society. Neither corporations nor governments — which have a way of acquiring the data the companies collect — should have access to unlimited knowledge about who we are and what we do all the time. Amazon has played a pivotal role in making that possible.