The Straits Times: “From a few basic questions, the kind of day-to-day things you might ask a friend or family member, an AI chatbot can learn more about you than those who have known you for years. Emotional maturity, relationship status, financial constraints, professional ambition and even your health — none of which you were asked about directly, and most of which you hadn’t realised you’d shared. Using the powerful pattern processing inherent to artificial intelligence, chatbots simply inferred these details. For years, the ability to build such a rich profile of you required something only a handful of companies had: the infrastructure to collect and process your online behaviour on a massive scale. That’s no longer true. Now, that same understanding can emerge from a single exchange — and the privacy consequences are profound.

• Google tracks your clicks; AI interprets your words Traditional tech monoliths, like Meta, Amazon, Google and Apple, collect your data on a scale that’s nearly impossible to comprehend. Every click, every search, every location, every purchase. Here’s a simplified explanation of how those big companies gather your data…”