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\nUNIVERSITY OF BUCKINGHAM PRESS,  \nAN IMPRINT OF LEGEND TIMES GROUP LTD  \n51 Gower Street  \nLondon WC1E 6HJ  \nUnited Kingdom [www.unibuckinghampress.com](www.unibuckinghampress.com)  \nFirst published by University of Buckingham Press in 2024 © Matt Stroud, 2024  \nThe right of the author to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data available.  \nISBN: 9781915054111  \nAll the images in this volume are reprinted with permission or presumed to be in the public domain. Every effort has been made to ascertain and acknowledge their copyright status, but any error or oversight will be rectified in subsequent printings.  \nAll rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise), without the prior written permission of the publisher. This book is sold subject to the condition that it shall not be resold, lent, hired out or otherwise circulated without the express prior consent of the publisher.  \nCONTENTS  \nDedication  \nTo my wonderful children William and Emily, for theirs is the future.  \nAcknowledgements  \nTo my family for their presence and encouragement throughout my life. To Dariush Yazpandanah, Devraj Basu, James Tooley and Kevin Telford for their advice and guidance on the manuscript.  \nAuthor’s Note  \nA good friend of mine studied economics at a University in the North of England. Their first finance lecture took place one winter ’s day, in a freezing lecture theatre. In shuffled the emeritus professor clutching a mug of hot tea, wearing an outdoor coat and carpet slippers. He stared up at the audience, and, in a thick Yorkshire accent, said, ‘If you remember nowt from my lectures, remember this: you only run out of cash once!’  \nIn a similar spirit, I’d ask that if you take just one thing from this book, may it be this: Power will follow data and AI, which, if centralised in internet platforms and governments, will undermine our open, liberal societies.  \nWhile this story has storm clouds on the horizon, it’s fundamentally one of hope. Hope for our future and the opportunities offered by the next phase of the digital revolution. To seize these opportunities, individuals must regain control of their digital worlds. Rarely in human history has the difference between success and failure been so stark. If we are to secure our bright future, we must now make choices.  \nMatt Stroud Hertford, 5th July 2023  \n0. PROLOGUE  \n‘In most cases, strengths and weaknesses are two sides of the same coin.’  \n– Steve Jobs  \n‘There was no file, no police warrant, no official advance notification. They just cut me off from the things I was once entitled to,’ said Liu Hu in 2017.1 Liu Hu is a renowned journalist, famed for breaking stories about corruption among Chinese officials. This was his first encounter with the Chinese ‘Social Credit Scoring’ system. The official system assigns Chinese citizens a ‘credit score’ according to their behaviour, adding to their score for desired actions, such as donating to charity and reducing the score for socially undesirable acts, such as traffic violations or criticising government officials. A low score has tangible implications, which in Liu Hu’s case meant he couldn’t buy a plane ticket or travel on some trains.  \nTwo years later and half a world away, researchers at the University of Chicago were making a call to Optum, a leading healthcare AI company. Optum had developed an AI-powered solution for hospitals and insurers to enable them to predict which patients were likely to benefit from more intensive treatments. The Chicago researchers found that the AI was systematically underestimating the h","cbCaiisvsQGEZPem","https://ap.wps.com/l/cbCaiisvsQGEZPem","pdf",4114467,313,"English","# Dedication\n# Acknowledgements\n# Author’s Note\n## Prologue","[{\"question\":\"What central concern does Digital Liberty raise about data and AI?\",\"answer\":\"Power can follow data and AI, and when centralised in internet platforms and governments it may undermine open, liberal societies.\"},{\"question\":\"How does the book use social credit scoring to illustrate data power?\",\"answer\":\"It describes China’s system of credit scores based on behaviour, showing how low scores can restrict basic activities like travel.\"},{\"question\":\"What healthcare AI problem is discussed, and why does it matter?\",\"answer\":\"An Optum AI solution underestimated black patients’ health needs due to assumptions built on historical spending patterns, highlighting bias in predictive models.\"}]","Digital Liberty - Power, Wealth and the Influence Machine - Author’s Note and Prologue | PDF",789]