AI wearables, like Meta’s Ray-Ban glasses, may be convenient, but at what cost — and not just to the wearer but to the surrounding public?
Unlike cameras and phones, which “announce” themselves, says Glenn Beck, AI wearables go practically undetected — which raises the issues of consent and privacy.
But this tension is not new.
Glenn notes that early photography required subjects to “hold still … 30 seconds,” so permission was built in. Then came the first true hidden cameras — “detective cameras” worn under a vest with the lens shaped “to look like a button.”
Shortly after, George Eastman’s small box camera arrived and made candid snapshots easy. The public backlash was fierce: beaches and the Washington Monument banned them, and papers called carriers “Kodak Fiends.” Within two years, Boston lawyer (and future Supreme Court justice) Louis Brandeis argued for “the right to be left alone” — a right that, as Glenn points out, “is not in the Constitution” but had to be invented “because of cameras.”
But what we’re dealing with today with AI wearables is “much worse,” he says.
“You are trading the right to be misunderstood in private now,” he says, pointing to CNN Business tech editor Lisa Eadicicco’s experience with her Amazon Bee Pioneer bracelet, which decided a casual comment about moving meant she was “anxious” about stability — even though she wasn’t.
“Now that conclusion exists in a file somewhere in a company’s system, and it will inform the next inference and the one after that, and it will store it,” says Glenn, describing how AI wearables’ conclusions about gathered data — even if it’s incorrect — will become part of the wearer or bystander’s “record.”
When one’s “off-the-record” self is eradicated, the result is that everyone becomes circumspect and reticent.
“In a room where everything is recorded and then held by a private company, that’s a room where nobody’s saying anything out loud. Nobody’s thinking out loud. Nobody’s risking anything,” says Glenn.
“A recording,” he explains, is “evidence — and evidence can get subpoenaed.”
“And it may be false evidence!” he exclaims.
“Every conversation you will ever have will be indexed and searchable … and it will be sitting on a server owned by a company with lawyers who work for the company,” Glenn continues.
But despite the devastating blows to privacy and consent, Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg’s pitch for AI-powered smart glasses, he explains, has essentially been: “Wear it, or fall behind.”
Right now, the risk of declining AI wearables is low, says Glenn, but a day is coming soon when life will become nearly impossible without them.
“Two years from now, when your team’s meeting has notes, action items, performance reviews, and they’re all running off transcripts, declining won’t be a preference any more,” he warns. Now “it’s a problem; it’s you being difficult. Nobody will forbid you. They’ll just build the office around the assumption and let the cost fall on the holdout: you.”
To hear more, watch the video above.
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