Embedding‑native communication is powerful because it operates below the surface of language. That power carries risk. Vectors can encode sensitive information about preferences, emotions, and beliefs. Ethical design is not optional.
Key Risks
- Privacy: Embeddings can reveal personal traits even when text is stripped.
- Manipulation: Systems could nudge users by adjusting vectors without transparency.
- Bias: Embedding spaces reflect the biases of their training data.
Principles for Safety
- Transparency: Users must see how vectors are transformed and why.
- Control: Users should edit, freeze, or reset their vectors.
- Auditability: Systems should provide a trace of operations and outputs.
- Consent: Users must opt‑in to storage or sharing of embeddings.
Practical Safeguards
- Local processing when possible.
- Differential privacy for shared embeddings.
- Clear interfaces for inspecting conceptual shifts.
Why It Matters
Embedding communication can shape cognition. Ethical design ensures that this new medium expands human agency rather than undermines it.