Privacy in the AI era is possible, says Proton’s CEO, but one thing keeps him up at night
Privacy in the AI era is possible, says Proton’s CEO, but one thing keeps him up at night
Publish Date: 2026-06-04 16:25:00
Source Domain: www.spiceworks.com
As AI’s popularity continues to soar, privacy and safety concerns surrounding the technology have kept pace, especially during the last year.
AI is now a common tool for cybercriminals, making it much easier for bad actors to steal your data. The technology also enables the scaling of mass surveillance to new extremes. AI agents like OpenClaw have continued to go rogue despite being embraced by tech giants like Nvidia and Meta, leaking or deleting sensitive information.
Earlier this spring, I attended Semafor World Economy in DC, where 500 CEOs joined government leaders to discuss the state of global business, including AI’s impact on security and privacy. Andy Yen, CEO of VPN and private digital service provider Proton, spoke on the topic; I sat down with Yen after his panel to discuss whether privacy can coexist with AI, what its future looks like, and why he thinks Proton is well-positioned to succeed.
READ MORE:
3 ways Cisco”s DefenseClaw aims to make agentic AI safer
Privacy in the public consciousness
AI and privacy trade-offs go hand in hand: the thinking goes that the more data AI tools have access to, the better they perform, whether for enterprise or individual use. That directly pits implementation and efficacy against risk tolerance. Still, popularity has skyrocketed over the last two years, especially for sensitive use cases such as healthcare.
Since Proton’s founding in 2014, long before AI use exploded amongst everyday consumers, the company has offered users privacy-first alternatives to tools from the Big Tech likes of Google, Microsoft, and Meta. However, Yen doesn’t think the rise of AI tools has popularized data privacy concerns amongst the public. In his view, the issue is a generational mismatch between privacy awareness and tech…
