Data cooperatives with fiduciary obligations to members provide a promising direction for the empowerment of individuals through their own personal data. A data cooperative can manage, curate and protect access to the personal data of citizen members. Furthermore, the data cooperative can run internal analytics in order to obtain insights regarding the well-being of its members. Armed with these insights, the data cooperative would be in a good position to negotiate better services and discounts for its members. Credit Unions and similar institutions can provide a suitable realization of data cooperatives.
Several states have now asked credit unions to look into the idea of data cooperatives, but the model has yet to gain a foothold. “Credit unions are conservative,” Professor Pentland said. But assuming the idea gains traction, the infrastructure won’t be difficult to build. Technology exists to automatically record and organize all the data that we give to companies; and credit unions, which have 100 million members nationwide, possess charters readymade to take on data management.
Professor Pentland contributed his idea to the AI World Social Contract 2020, which will be discussed at Global Cybersecurity Day Symposium on December 12, 2019, at Loeb House, Harvard University: Every citizen is entitled to basic rights and dignity that are enlarged by AI and in the Internet Age and entail greater responsibility:
Data Rights and Responsibilities for Citizen: each citizen will be entitled to access to a smart phone or similar device and will control their own data (Data Home), including a right to privacy.
Individuals would pool their personal data in a single institution — just as they pool money in banks — and that institution would both protect the data and put it to use. Credit unions as one type of organization that could fill this role. And while companies would need to request permission to use consumer data, consumers themselves could request analytic insights from the cooperative.
Professor Alex Pentland, MIT, is one of top 7 most powerful data scientists. He is a co-founder of the AIWS Innovation Network and the AIWS Social Contract 2020.