So the last couple of weeks have been interesting. First, about mid-February until late last week, the weather where I live has been interesting. To the point of us not being able to leave the house for a couple of weeks due to ice on the driveway and on the street. Now, you may think, “Linus, why don’t you have salt? or an ice-melter?”. Well, the whole province (both the government and commercial stores) doesn’t have any salt. In fact, it is so devoid of salt, de-icer stuff, sand or whatever. I managed to eventually find someone who had crushed gravel so I could get the drive but I couldn’t make it up the hill (the downside to my Tundra is that it’s 2WD and I swear, once I get a job, that is one of the first things I’m looking to offload and replace).
The second thing that distracted me was a head-cold, given to me by my lovely wife. 🙄 Luckily, no fever but having my sinuses drain into my throat makes me feel rather miserable and not really want to do anything.
Anyways, I did want to talk about Apple AI on iPhones. Up-front, I think AI can be helpful. But security and privacy have to be part of the discussion of AI, especially when applying it to individuals. I’m not personally keen on Apple using how I use my phone as a way to train their AI. So I turned it off. I thought that was all I needed. I was wrong.
So first, go to the Settings on your iPhone and select Apple Intelligence & Siri.
Now, by default, under Apple Intelligence & Siri, Apple Intelligence is turned on. I had turned it off. That’s all I should need, right? Wrong. There’s more that you need to do. And if you’re like me, who has had an iPhone since they first came out, you’ll have a TON of apps that you’ll need to do the next steps for. I recommend streaming your favourite show while doing the next steps because it’s tedious.
If you scroll further down on this page, you’ll see the section called Apple Intelligence and Siri App Access. Now, I don’t mind using Siri for things like Apple Car Play, usually when I’m messaging my wife using hands-free while I’m driving.
In App Clips, I’ve turned off all the options. Now, you may decide to keep these on but personally, I turn them off. Largely because I only use Siri for specific things and app clips isn’t one of those things.
Then, I go back to Apple Intelligence & Siri Settings and select Apps. This is the tedious part. I’d suggest targetting your most commonly used apps (i.e., your daily/hourly apps you use) and go into them.
Now, by default all these settings are enabled. This screenshot is after I disabled everything. The big one of concern is the first one. Learn from this App means that Apple AI will learn from HOW you use the app. That means, my behaviour is training Apple AI even when I don’t have Apple AI enabled. To me, that feels somewhat like a privacy violation. You will have to do this for EVERY app individually.
There are other options that you may decide to keep on. For example, if you go back to Settings, scroll down to Privacy & Security. Scroll down to the Transparency Logs section, you’ll see App Privacy Report and Apple Intelligence Report, these two reports have some validity. The first, App Privacy Report, shows how apps track your info and usage. The second, Apple Intelligence Report, how Apple AI is using your data. It’s not supposed to contain personal info but it may. Both of these can be exported so you can review what is being tracked and how it’s being used.
Now, you might think I have a bit of tin-foiled hat on my head but in this day and age, the use of the individual behaviour to train AI is massive. If you thought that how social media uses your behaviour (and sells it) is a violation of your privacy, this is even greater. It would have been nice if Apple had created an option to turn it off for all apps in one simple radio button but I suspect that they want to get whatever they can to train their AI.
That is the biggest challenge for AI: enough data to make it useful. Without that, AI is like any other data: crap in, crap out. A lot of what is going on today is about getting as much data as possible to feed into AI to leverage it to make decisions for humans. And that, I don’t believe, is necessarily a good thing. We’ve already weakened our own short term memory with “smart phones”. Having it do our critical thinking is not necessarily a good thing.
Simply put, critical thinking is about looking at info or assumptions and questioning them; it’s about looking at evidence or facts and determining how valid and relevant that info is; it’s about recognizing any biases, whether from the source of the data and/or within ourselves; being open to different perspectives and viewpoints; and it means that from all that, we form logical connections between the ideas and information, and then forming conclusions without being influenced by emotion or authority.
Critical thinking is something that is unique to humans and for it to really work, we have context and experience of our lives. That is something that AI cannot experience or data-mine out of our app behaviour. And I do not believe that we should encourage AI to gather this kind of data. Whenever AI is “forced” into the personal world of individuals, it ultimately is not for the benefit of individuals but rather the benefit of the shareholders (that is, how can company X make money off of the customers they already sell lots to).
At the very least, AI needs to be more transparent it what it is doing, what data it is currently using and that it will be limited to ONLY that data. The bigger concern will be not just how it’s using current data but how it will expand it’s data consumption to even more. So being aware is your biggest defence against corporations using even more of your data and profiting off of you. Things to think about.
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