“Privacy’s Prediction Paradox,” Abdi Aidid ’16, Asst. Prof. University of Toronto

This talk explores an idea tentatively termed “privacy’s prediction paradox.” Where individuals may have an objection to the use of their personal data for predictive systems such as automated decision-making, in a world where such tools proliferate, those same individuals will also have a vested interest in ensuring that the decisions are accurate – i.e. personal to them. For instance, the fact of an algorithm that predicts a would-be homeowner’s creditworthiness might be concerning to a mortgage applicant, but may be just as concerning if it was based on inaccurate or insufficiently specific information about the applicant. As a result, subjects of algorithmic decision-making systems may well want more of their personal data to inform the predictive system’s processes and outcomes. I explain that this paradox is the result of an inescapable feature of privacy law: its fixation with privacy as an individual right. In other words, the privacy law has developed to contend with data challenges that AI is largely rendering moot. The talk explores privacy law’s peculiar limitations in the context of AI-enabled prediction, and evaluates the effect of emergent phenomena like synthetic data and generative artificial intelligence on privacy law’s core precepts. 

Abdi Aidid is a Visiting Associate Professor of Law at Yale Law School and an Assistant Professor at University of Toronto Faculty of Law. He researches and teaches in the areas of privacy, law & technology and civil adjudication.

He received his B.A. from the University of Toronto, his J.D. from Yale Law School, and his LL.M from the University of Toronto. Aidid was previously a litigator at Covington & Burling LLP in New York and Davies Ward Phillips & Vineberg LLP in Toronto, and most recently served as the VP, Legal Research at Blue J, where he oversaw the development of machine learning-enabled research and analytics tools.

His book "The Legal Singularity: How Artificial Intelligence Can Make the Law Radically Better" (with Benjamin Alarie) was published in 2023. His scholarship has appeared in or will appear in University of Toronto Law Journal, the Georgetown Journal of Legal Ethics, the Fordham Law Review, the Journal of Law & Equality, and other journals.