MIDATA'S -SWISS- MIDTERM : USERS PRECIS

One approach involves putting users' data under independent control through a trust or cooperative with a legal duty to act in users' interests.

For instance, MIDATA, a Swiss cooperative, lets members store their health data on an encrypted platform and decide, case by case, whether to share it with researchers.

MIDATA's members govern its policies at a general assembly, and an ethics board they elect reviews research requests for access.

None of these options are easy. But we still have time to work them out to avoid the two outcomes I fear most:

A technology that manipulates the people who use it at no cost and one that exclusively benefits the few who can afford to use it.

The World Students Society thanks Zoe Hitzig, a former researcher at AI.