Skip to Content
Smart cities

Experts are leaving Alphabet’s smart-city project over privacy concerns

October 24, 2018

An expert that Alphabet’s Sidewalk Labs hired to oversee privacy issues related to an ambitious smart-city project has quit over proposed data-collection practices.

Details: Sidewalk Labs is trying to build a futuristic neighborhood called Quayside on Toronto’s waterfront. The development is the first big assignment for the Google sister company, which was founded in 2015 to develop technology to alleviate urban problems.

But: The project keeps running into obstacles. In August, it delayed the release of its final development plan because of local resistance. Now privacy concerns have compelled Ann Cavoukian, the former privacy commissioner for the province of Ontario, to leave the project. She says she resigned because third-party companies and developers might be able to access identifiable information about Quayside residents once the project gets built. (Sidewalk Labs says it should not formulate rules for third parties on its own and proposes creating a “Civic Data Trust” to devise that policy instead.) Another advisor also left in recent weeks over privacy issues.

Why it matters: Sidewalk Labs intends to sell technologies originally developed for Quayside to other cities. That means these privacy practices could affect a number of people, potentially around the world. The controversy also feeds the ongoing debate of whether big tech companies are doing enough to protect user data.

Keep Reading

Most Popular

Large language models can do jaw-dropping things. But nobody knows exactly why.

And that's a problem. Figuring it out is one of the biggest scientific puzzles of our time and a crucial step towards controlling more powerful future models.

OpenAI teases an amazing new generative video model called Sora

The firm is sharing Sora with a small group of safety testers but the rest of us will have to wait to learn more.

Google’s Gemini is now in everything. Here’s how you can try it out.

Gmail, Docs, and more will now come with Gemini baked in. But Europeans will have to wait before they can download the app.

This baby with a head camera helped teach an AI how kids learn language

A neural network trained on the experiences of a single young child managed to learn one of the core components of language: how to match words to the objects they represent.

Stay connected

Illustration by Rose Wong

Get the latest updates from
MIT Technology Review

Discover special offers, top stories, upcoming events, and more.

Thank you for submitting your email!

Explore more newsletters

It looks like something went wrong.

We’re having trouble saving your preferences. Try refreshing this page and updating them one more time. If you continue to get this message, reach out to us at customer-service@technologyreview.com with a list of newsletters you’d like to receive.