Episode 25: Privacy in the time of AI

Privacy in the time of AI

Guest: Jane Horvath

Once upon a time we thought we had privacy.  Then came credit cards, which captured the card owner's location and activity with each transaction.  Then came the Internet, which made connecting all the dots easy and cheap, and the erosion of privacy accelerated.

Large language models, LLMs, like the Generative AI system ChatGPT and its ilk have the potential to make the cost of connecting dots vanishingly small, thus eliminating even the illusion of privacy, especially because large databases are irresistible to LLM developers as training data for their models.

In this episode we are fortunate to have as our guest Jane Horvath.  Jane is comparatively unique in having earned academic degrees and practiced in both Computer Science and in Law.  Before law school, she wrote software that may still be running on the International Space Station.

Jane is further distinguished by having served as Apple's Chief Privacy Officer, Google's Global Privacy Counsel, and the DoJ's first Privacy Counsel and Civil Liberties Officer, among other roles.

Recorded: 2025-06-30