There is No Linear Roadmap to Adoption
In general, our goal is to follow the path of Open AI, a group of concerned people who are developing a stack of tools that will help power the next generation of smart services. They want AI to benefit humankind. They want it to be done ethically, with safety and oversight at the forefront.
In the same way, we want to build the personal data locker as a cloud service that has many integrations and front ends. It is the beginning of the Pull era for personal data. To understand how it becomes mainstream, you need to first understand how things might change.
Change on the Horizon
The more things stay the same, the more big companies benefit. But there will be some changes, and they will help us succeed. It’s impossible to predict exactly, but three disruptions could help us tremendously:
A worldwide viral pandemic that accelerates the adoption of digital services into our everyday lives. The result will be a more connected society sooner than we would have seen otherwise. This gives us a chance to introduce new kinds of apps and more security and privacy, which are now rising in importance.
Digital Identity is coming. The movement is finally gaining steam. We can’t say which standard will win, but we believe the next five years will finally see real adoption of a strong, self-sovereign digital identity scheme. See our resources section to learn more.
New regulations force big changes. There are a few privacy laws in the United States but nothing on the scale of GDPR in Europe. GDPR is onerous. It prevents startups from innovating, and it probably doesn’t accomplish its goal. It’s another EU set of rules that force a lot of compliance without making the public safer. There is growing demand to hold companies accountable for the handling and mis-handling of user data. The stronger regulations become, the more people will benefit from having their own data and managing it themselves.
People begin to wake up to the nightmare. Unfortunately, most people are all too willing to give up their personal information (including passwords!) and accept advertising as long as their services are “free” and easy. Today, only a tiny fraction of the population cares what’s going on. They are too busy. They are worried that their kids are spending too much time online, they find ads annoying, but they don’t really notice that large companies know more about them than they do themselves.
Watch Tristan Harris testifying before congress:
Handsets begin to disappear. It’s very possible that in 20 years we no longer use handsets very much. That’s because the data will be in the cloud and much of the interaction will be by voice and various displays, either built into our glasses or in our environment. We could use our watches and earbuds and glasses to do most of what we want to do. Some of us will have various kinds of implants, either for identity or also for interaction with our environment.
Screens and other devices will be all around us. Imagine that as you go from your home to a hotel in another city, your data just follows you, and you are always logged into (and out of) devices as you go. While this sounds like a wet dream for advertisers, they won’t know anything about you if you don’t want them to. For example, to use a toll road, you could accept to see/hear custom-tailored ads as you drive, or you could pay. You can be identified or anonymous. The choice will be up to you.
Approach your car, and it instantly knows your schedule and plans your route. When you sit down in an airplane, the screen in the seat in front of you simply turns into your familiar digital environment. Your personal digital assistant will be waiting for you in your hotel room. You won’t need a special card or pass to your gym, a ski resort, a golf club, buy a train ticket, or anything else - just walk through and approve any purchase with a wave or a wink in real time, without a membership. By then, computers will be everywhere, they won’t cost much, and any device becomes your device when you get close enough. In this world, what matters is the data and access to the data.
As the price of hardware comes down, it’s hard to see Apple selling $1,000 phones with 2-year contracts and $2,000 laptops we have to carry around with us, no matter how powerful they are. The real power is in the data and online processors. Today, we wouldn’t think of leaving home without our phones, but that will change.
Give Ray Kurzweil one minute to explain:
Adoption
It’s important to realize that consumer behavior isn’t going to change very much. People may be aware, but they won’t change their habits. To make the personal data locker a success, we must not try to change people’s habits. We must build a system that does everything for them better than what they have today. For a personal digital assistant to succeed, you need to ask: What problems does it solve? Who wants it? How do we convert people from the current vendor-centric model to a human-centric model?
The above trends are likely to provide a tailwind for the personal data locker movement, though it’s impossible to tell what the timeline will be. Ultimately, handsets probably won’t play much of a role in everyday life. But for the next ten years, they certainly will. Imagine that a combination of these things forces a handset manufacturer like Huawei or LG to look for an alternative operating system. Or if they develop edge devices that need to be connected. If we have a viable alternative, they may be willing to add ours as a choice or make the jump entirely.
Two Immutable Laws
The following two graphs show why very little progress has been made over the past twenty years:
As a contributor to the World Economic Forum report, Personal Data: The Emergence of a New Asset Class, and part of the identity community for many years, I believe these are immutable laws that will not bend or change for anyone. Our biggest barrier is that most people don’t perceive any problem. They get free services and, even if they are aware they are being used and abused, even if they understand it costs them more money when things are free, they don’t want to go to any real effort to change.
So it makes no sense to go after mainstream consumers. To start, we’ll need …
Early Adopters
In the United States, there are probably around 5 million people who are aware of these issues and would be interested in trying something better. They are:
Parents, who want a better online experience for their kids
People who really care about privacy
Technologists, who know enough not to trust huge companies with sensitive data, because they know the systems aren’t secure
They are out there, but we must work hard to give early adopters real and convenient solutions to their everyday problems. This is why I emphasize use cases. We must find very specific problems to solve, get feedback, and keep iterating to make our early customers happy.
The Personal-Assistant Marketplace
The big breakthrough in what we’re doing is the marketplace for personal digital assistants. This is the key. Not only will we develop our own digital assistant, but we want to create all the APIs and documentation so anyone can do the same. I envision several layers of such assistants - some of your personal assistants will hire and manage other personal assistants. This is where we will spend most of our time - 1) building digital assistants that respond to specific customer needs and 2) building the market platform so others can do the same. This is the topic of the two videos on the solution page.
How Will This Develop?
I imagine we will divide our time and resources into three main areas of work:
Core Team
I want to hire the kinds of people you see interviewed in The Social Dilemma - technologists with a deep concern for privacy and new models. This team will discuss, learn, describe the core functionality we need, and build it. I envision an “engine” that other groups can use, similar to Open AI.
Community
I want to build a worldwide community where anyone can come learn, contribute, collaborate, and help us grow. I hope to grow to thousands around the world, as I did in 2017.
The community has five layers:
Core team members, who are paid staff or alumni.
Influencers whom the core team can engage with.
Builders creating solutions.
Interested people who might use our resources or take a class or attend an event but are not committed. They will be good product testers.
The community is critical, because Apple, Google, and Microsoft aren’t going to like what we’re building. They will oppose our efforts on their platforms, and possibly even in congress. The more supporters the better our chance to succeed. Please see the about page to add your name to the list of supporters!
Evangelism
Similar to Open AI, the goal is to provide a big tent that many groups can work under. See our project list for many examples of people working on solutions that complement ours. We want to support those projects and give them the tools they need to go after their initial target markets.
We can also work with the GDPR community to give them a better solution. I have given talks about this - with a personal data locker, consumers are always compliant and protected, vs forcing large companies who collect data to be compliant.
Summary
The road to adoption won’t be straight and it won’t be predictable. We should make many small bets and accelerate those that pay off. Open AI started with $100 million. I hope to start with 20 percent of that. If I have a chance to hire 20 world-class people for all the tasks outlined here, I believe we’ll have a chance to secure some early wins and raise more.