Written by: Samuel Guerra Arriaza
On Sept. 25, the tech giant Meta held its annual flagship event, Meta Connect 2024. Meta introduced multiple updates and new products to the public at the event, most featuring AI. Tech companies hold events following a recurring model, and this year’s event would have been like any other if not for one particular device that captured people’s attention–the Orion Augmented Reality (AR) glasses–or, as Mark Zuckerberg enthusiastically called them, “the most advanced glasses the world has ever seen.”
These Orion AR glasses have attached cameras that can identify what the user looks at in the physical world and provide helpful visualizations. For example, you could open your fridge and ask for a recipe based on what’s inside.
Despite not being available to the public yet, Meta is proud of using this technology for “enabling digital experiences that are unconstrained by the limits of a smartphone screen,” Using less corporate jargon, imagine being able to do pretty much everything you currently do on your smartphone but with glasses instead.
Smart glasses and similar technologies are not new. Apple, for example, released its Vision Pro VR headset earlier this year, although it differs in principle from AR glasses. However, tech enthusiasts agree that the Orion glasses seem to be making the use of AR technology closer to becoming a reality in everyday life.
Privacy concerns emerge with the rise of a future saturated with readily available cameras that can capture any real-world interaction. Nowadays, we have normalized having cameras around us, such as smartphones, dashboards, doorbells, etc. But this upcoming iteration of cameras constantly moves with every user at an eye level, acting as an extra pair of eyes. The crucial difference is these digital eyes can keep a detailed account of everything happening in front of them, constantly capturing new data that could be misused.
In recent years, we have witnessed the surge of AI with its benefits and risks in spreading misinformation via the generation of hyper-realistic fake images or deep fake videos to scams via AI-powered impersonation. As technology advances, less information is needed to train these AIs. Moreover, AI models used for chatbots like ChatGPT, Claude, and others are being trained using big data from internet users, often without their consent or awareness.
This is where the importance of talking about the “right to be forgotten” and its online presence comes into play in this new AI era. In some countries, this right currently advocates for removing private information about a person from internet searches and other directories under specific circumstances. The conversation about this online right is not new; it was established in the European Union in 2014 by the European Court of Justice. In the United States, a Pew Research Center survey conducted in June 2019 found that 74% of American adults think it is more important to be able to “keep things about themselves from being searchable online,” while 23% said it is more important to be able to “discover potentially useful information about others.” Despite this public support, there is no federal-level regulatory protection, and I believe this is especially crucial when facing the new and upcoming threats posed by AI.
Beyond the risks of having personal information in the hands of tech giants for their use, profitability, potential misuse, and a future panopticon-like reality, I believe that prolonging one’s presence in the collective consciousness goes against what our human nature claims. The possibility of our digital footprint remaining forever after death brings a new set of issues we are not prepared to face. I believe there should be a choice to opt out of this digital persistence, allowing us to come to terms with the natural destiny on Earth of being remembered by loved ones and, eventually, forgotten after a few generations.
Editor’s Note: The Opinion Section encourages multiple perspectives, so please feel free to send a response or other opinions for future articles to allisongrundy@southern.edu.
