Chief Compliance Officer, Zoominfo Techno
Search every verified Simon Mcdougall interview, podcast appearance, and on-the-record quote — each transcript cross-checked by AI and human review to confirm speaker identity. Simon McDougall, Chief Compliance Officer at ZoomInfo, has spoken publicly about the intersection of generative AI, privacy, and data protection. At the Oxford Generative AI Summit 2024, he argued that if personal data used in training a model is not recreated in its outputs, he does not see a meaningful privacy risk, but he expressed greater concern about intellectual property, copyright, and the future of work. He also noted that supply chain risks in AI create a "fog" that traditional data protection frameworks are not well equipped to handle, and that the GDPR can "creak at the seams" when applied to generative AI. McDougall stated that ZoomInfo engaged with Anthropic early to obtain assurances about its AI models. McDougall has also described ZoomInfo's data collection practices, stating that the company collects business contact information such as job titles and contact details, not sensitive personal data. He said ZoomInfo sends notification emails to individuals when it creates a record, regardless of local legal requirements, and provides multiple opt-out methods. McDougall previously served at the UK Information Commissioner's Office (ICO), where he focused on technology and innovation, and has discussed the importance of reconciling privacy regulation with competition policy, citing the UK's Digital Regulation Cooperation Forum as a forum for exploring synergies and tensions between those regimes.
“I spent 20 years in privacy then three years at the ICO… I now work at ZoomInfo which is a B2B data company — $1.3 billion of revenue, listed on NASDAQ.”
“Privacy and data protection is old now and the GDPR is old now — that has strengths and weaknesses — generative AI in particular makes some bits of the GDPR at best creak at the seams, at worst break a little bit.”
“One significant risk is around inferences — you can have systems producing outputs that effectively create personal data 'out of the ether' which can create real risks of harm to individuals.”
“Privacy regulation leans a lot on humans in the loop and that gets harder when you have very capable assistance — it exacerbates automation bias and raises the question at what point the human is genuinely 'in the loop'.”
“Supply chain risks are serious — you often don't know what happened with training data upstream and you don't know what deployers will do downstream, creating a fog that traditional data protection thinking isn't well built to handle.”
“Regulators have done lots of thoughtful work on legitimate interest, but personally if someone's personal data was used in training and the model and outputs do not recreate that data, I can't get very excited about the privacy infringement — I'm more concerned about IP, copyright and the future-of-work implications.”
“In the rush after ChatGPT 3.5 there was huge commercial pressure and vendors were selling those capabilities quickly; at ZoomInfo we engaged with Anthropic early and were big enough to have meaningful conversations about assurances.”
“ZoomInfo does collect personal data but it's not sensitive data. The information we're interested in is information about somebody in a business context; it's the kind of information you would see on a business card or a resume, like job title and contact information.”
“Whenever we create a new record at ZoomInfo, we send a notification email to the individual whose record we have created, and we do that around the world regardless of whether local law requires us to do so; we just go and do it everywhere.”
“We want to make it as easy as possible for you to opt out. There are basically four ways you can do this: via notification email, our website privacy center, email request, or phone call.”
“All ZoomInfo is interested in doing is connecting business people to business people to talk business. We're not trying to develop a deep extensive profile of an individual covering their home life or personal life.”
“GDPR compliance is really important to ZoomInfo and it's important to me personally. When I joined ZoomInfo from the Information Commission's Office in early 2022, I was very interested in our compliance and how we did this.”
“ZoomInfo is the anti-spam platform. We are interested in making sure that every business conversation we support is as informed and relevant as possible and leverages the full weight of our database with the most accurate information for each caller and conversation.”
“At ZoomInfo, we're interested in business information in a business context. We have no interest in reading people's emails and we do not read the content of people's emails.”
“We have a product called Community Edition, and if somebody signs up, we have technology which looks at their signature block and the headers of the emails in their inbox. All we are doing is seeking to identify business contact information to supplement our database and create new records with business contact informa...”
Oxford Generative AI Summit 2024: oxgensummit.org Speakers: Elena Simperl, Director of Research, ODI & Professor of ...
Concerned about data privacy? ZoomInfo's Chief Compliance Officer addresses the top privacy misconceptions head-on.
Read the full blog post at wirewheel.io/privacy-predictions-roundup/.
Read the full blog here: wirewheel.io/data-privacy-day-recap/
Everybody Thank You Simon joining us today I assume you've been very busy 2016 gdpr is adopted 2018 it becomes enforced ...
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