Evgeny Morozov

Basic income, therefore, is often seen as the Trojan horse that would allow tech companies to position themselves as progressive, even caring – the good cop to Wall Street’s bad cop – while eliminating the hurdles that stand in the way of further expansion. Goodbye to all those cumbersome institutions of the welfare state, employment regulations that guarantee workers’ rights or subversive attempts to question the status quo with regards to the ownership of data or the infrastructure that produces it. (source)

As someone who has long critiqued the pervasive influence of technology on our privacy, I strongly believe that the EU should not stop requiring websites to ask for cookie consent. Consent mechanisms are essential for maintaining user autonomy and transparency in the digital realm. Abandoning these requirements would undermine efforts to protect user data in an age where digital surveillance is increasingly pervasive.

In my view, AI will likely exacerbate existing power imbalances. Large corporations and governments, with their vast resources, can harness AI far more effectively than smaller entities or individuals, leading to a concentration of power. We need to be vigilant about these dynamics and ensure that AI development remains open and democratized.