February / May 2023

Elizabeth Renieris is a Senior Research Associate at the Institute for Ethics in AI at the University of Oxford. Chapter 1 of her book opens with: 

“For more than fifty years, we have been so busy protecting data that we have largely forgotten to protect people.”

Words that stopped me in my tracks. So simple. So profound. So true.

The book is quite simply a revelation.

Renieris articulates so beautifully and so clearly what many of us working in this field have been feeling for a while – that we are at risk losing sight of what is at the heart of data and its protection.

Once we start to use language such as personal autonomy, human dignity, choice, consent, self-determination, we start to reframe conversations and perspectives. Renieris calls on us to restore the relevance of human rights through a ‘recalibration’.

Changing the way we think starts with each of us. It requires us to be more thoughtful and engaged, to be better attuned to the ‘why’ data and its protection matters so much, and to start to use language that connects the data with the human.

Renieris gives us the tools to challenge the current narrative and trajectory in this superbly written book. As we stand at the cusp of ever faster technological innovation, her work could not be more timely and more urgent.

“It is only when we begin with people, as human rights do, that we can better withstand the rapidly evolving technological landscape, even if we should eventually find ourselves at the dawn of the metaverse.”