Google is Keen to Harvest your Interests (Pinterests)

In a world where major Silicon Valley companies like Google and Facebook got ahead from anti-trust acquisitions of other apps like YouTube, Instagram, WhatsApp, they keep trying to clone, acquire and push down their rivals.

While Google's grip on advertising is slipping away to ByteDance, Amazon and the rise of smaller apps like Snapchat, Pinterest, Twitter and so forth, it's using its AI prowess to try to stay ahead.

While Google harvests our personal data via its suite of products including our location data, it's not enough, it wants to know more about our "interests". It's very keen to do it.

While ByteDance is changing the world with a suite of apps, an entry into gaming, education and even E-commerce. The supposedly best Silicon Valley tech companies can barely launch an app or market a new product. So here we are talking about the AI-clone of Pinterest, that Google has recently come up with.

So why is this disturbing? It shows Google still wants to use its world-class AI talent to harvest our data, and now our interests better. While on the left, Silicon Valley wants to profit from the Black Lives Matter protests, on the right, Google’s Area 120 team, an internal incubator that creates experimental apps and services, has launched Keen: a would-be Pinterest rival that draws on the search giant’s machine learning expertise to curate topics. This is really tone deaf and disturbing.

Google is maybe the biggest anti-trust abuser in the history of the internet, and here it's leveraging AI not just to clone a competitor, but to better harvest what we are interested in. Are you sure you want to work at Google? How keen are you really?

Why don't we just Connect, curate and expand our favorite things with Google? I think the people at this company still live in the 90s. Keen is basically a Pinterest for very lazy people. Keen lets you curate the content you love, share your collection with others and find new content based on what you have saved (all the while harvesting your personal data no doubt).

Let's just keep using AI for greed guys! As the Verge insinuates, Pinterest has already captured the hobby-focused side of this market with its pinboard-style visual design — two characteristics that Keen is trying to imitate. No my friends, it's trying to clone a competitor, and steal more of our data for free. Is that the end game and ethics of AI? Just a surveillance capitalism play? Is that really the end-game of Google? The company that revolutionized the world? It might as well be acquired by the Chinese State, if it keeps wanting to go on this way.

Censorship and demonetization of free speech has already started on YouTube. Is BigTech really the authority we want controlling the internet with their lobbyists impacting congress? There is something very wrong with Silicon Valley, which is at the heart of how capitalism is failing. The future of American AI is essentially corrupt.

Google is trying to convince us to use Keen, due to Google's superiority in machine-learning. Google’s expertise in machine learning, which Adams says will surface “helpful content related to your interests.” The problem? Google does not have a history of using AI for good. When are we going to take the ethics of AI seriously?

But there’s also the question of what Google itself is getting out of this project in terms of data. I'm not feeling so great already, Google harvests my data via Chrome, my Gmail account, my searches, my YouTube activity and so forth. Why would I use another of its products? Did I mention my Google Home also harvests my data? I'm not keen on the surveillance capitalism Google and Facebook have started, because it leads directly to the world police state of AI China had modeled after how these companies operate.

Google has led us to an internet that's not free, private or a place where our human rights are respected. An internet of monopolies is not an American led internet that's good for the planet. Google has incredibly talented people, but they aren't standing up for what's right.

Google doesn't help me share my passions with the world, though it does make me a kog in the wheel of surveillance capitalism. I don't feel great about that. It doesn't make me feel like Silicon Valley cares about me, just my data. Google, that's not the world I want to live in. I don't want your AI to do evil.

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