Google Wins Bid to Buy Spirit Airlines' Data, Sparking Employee Privacy Concerns

Spirit Airlines' bankruptcy has left many questions about its future, but one thing is clear: the airline's data is valuable. Google won a bid to purchase Spirit's data for $10 million, including employee records, flight operations information, and Wi-Fi sales. The sale would not include customer data, according to a Google spokesperson.

The Association of Flight Attendants (AFA), which represents 5,500 former Spirit Airlines flight attendants, is objecting to the sale. They argue that it would include sensitive employee information and that even Google's promised safeguards wouldn't prevent privacy violations. The union wants either all flight-attendant-related data to be excluded from the sale or for employee data to receive the same protections as consumer information.

The AFA is not alone in its concerns about employee data being used for AI training. Seema Patel, a law professor at the University of California, College of the Law, San Francisco, says that companies are 'having a field day' with employee data and that there's a gap between consumer data protections and those for workers.

The potential sale is part of a larger trend of companies racing to record human work processes to train machines. This 'egocentric data collection' has become increasingly valuable as the AI industry continues to grow.