Is Using AI to Track Data for Prevention of Future Pandemics Ethical?

In order to monitor the spread of the Coronavirus, governments worldwide are using surveillance-camera footage, smartphone location data, and credit card purchase records to help trace the recent movements of people who may have contracted COVID-19. Instead of using touch-based sensors, facial recognition systems are being used and the facial information integrated with other data such as phone location can be used to track people’s movements and behaviours - where you can make a judgement about whether their actions are permissible or not. However, facial recognition software isn’t 100% accurate yet and they are also ethical issues being raised as a result of using such technology - which led to wanting greater government regulation. There needs to be a balance between doing whatever we can to protect people’s health and ensuring their privacy and liberty. However this period of 12-24 months, we are heading into a new normal and there is no going back. Our focus, for now, is managing the crisis with the available tools we have until there is enough herd immunity, treatment therapies, and an effective vaccine.

Once the surveillance system to track people during a pandemic is up and running, it will be very hard to reverse, which means people’s privacy and liberty will be at risk permanently. Fortunately, there is a proposal out of Europe, that would limit the retention of collected data for only 14 days - the period of possible virus transmission. However, the only effective way to protect privacy is to require the surveillance system to expire as soon as the pandemic ends. Fear is that once the outbreak is over the government will continue to use this technology to invade the privacy of the citizens and use the data collected for COVID-19 for other reasons.

References:

Grossman, G. (2020). After coronavirus, AI could be central to our new normal.

Retrieved 29 May 2020, from https://venturebeat.com/2020/04/08/after-coronavirus-ai-could-be-central-to-our-new-normal/