Any fair-minded assessment of the dangers of the deal between Britain’s National Health Service (NHS) and DeepMind must start by acknowledging that both sides mean well. DeepMind is one of the leading artificial intelligence (AI) companies in the world. The potential of this work applied to healthcare is very great, but it could also lead to further concentration of power in the tech giants. It is against that background that the information commissioner, Elizabeth Denham, has issued her damning verdict against the Royal Free hospital trust under the NHS, which handed over to DeepMind the records of 1.6 million patients in 2015 on the basis of a vague agreement which took far too little account of the patients’ rights and their expectations of privacy.

    DeepMind has almost apologized. The NHS trust has mended its ways. Further arrangements—and there may be many—between the NHS and DeepMind will be carefully scrutinised to ensure that all necessary permissions have been asked of patients and all unnecessary data has been cleaned. There are lessons about informed patient consent to learn. But privacy is not the only angle in this case and not even the most important. Ms Denham chose to concentrate the blame on the NHS trust, since under existing law it “controlled” the data and DeepMind merely “processed” it. But this distinction misses the point that it is processing and aggregation, not the mere possession of bits, that gives the data value.

    The great question is who should benefit from the analysis of all the data that our lives now generate. Privacy law builds on the concept of damage to an individual from identifiable knowledge about them. That misses the way the surveillance economy works. The data of an individual there gains its value only when it is compared with the data of countless millions more.

    The use of privacy law to curb the tech giants in this instance feels slightly maladapted. This practice does not address the real worry. It is not enough to say that the algorithms DeepMind develops will benefit patients and save lives. What matters is that they will belong to a private monopoly which developed them using public resources. If software promises to save lives on the scale that drugs now can, big data may be expected to behave as a big pharm has done. We are still at the beginning of this revolution and small choices now may turn out to have gigantic consequences later. A long struggle will be needed to avoid a future of digital feudalism. Ms Denham’s report is a welcome start.

答案精析：根据题干中的last paragraph和real worry定位到最后一段第二句。在定位句之后，文章说到，重要的是（What matters），这些通过使用公共资源研发出来的算法将属于私人垄断企业。由此可以推断出，大数据也被这些私人企业垄断了，故选D。

错项排除：最后一段第五句中确实出现big pharm，原文说的是大数据可能被期望像大制药公司那样运作，但并没有谈到恶性竞争的问题，A错。最后一段第一句中提到，在这个例子中，使用隐私法削弱科技巨头公司有一点不太合适，而并不是B选项所说的“无效执行”，隐私法问题也不是担忧的核心，B错。最后一段第五句中提到software，但没提到“不受控制”的问题，C错。