Summary
As AI-enabled smartphones, voice recorders, smart glasses and wearables spread, the odds of ending up in the background of someone else’s video are approaching certainty. This episode of The Prof G Pod examines what that means for consumer privacy, and when the convenience of a surveillance-driven economy stops being worth the privacy given up.
The host opens by defending targeted advertising, arguing that ad revenue keeps prices lower on platforms like Uber and Amazon. Uber earns roughly $2 billion a year from ads, and Amazon’s ad business brought in about $69 billion in 2025, which offsets the thin margins of retail. The discussion then turns to the harder question of consent: choosing to share your own data is very different from having it handed over by someone else’s camera or device.
Examples include Ring’s Super Bowl ad for an AI-powered lost-dog search across neighborhood cameras, which critics compared to George Orwell’s 1984. The episode also covers Flock Safety’s license-plate camera network, linked to an 11% drop in car thefts in one study but also to reported misuse by at least 50 police employees. A conversation with writer Kayla Scanlon, who wrote about buying Meta glasses, explores where the line on privacy should sit.
📺 Source: The Prof G Pod – Scott Galloway · Published October 07, 2026
🏷️ Format: Podcast
