CAT 2022 Slot 2 — VARC Question 21
The passage given below is followed by four alternate summaries. Choose the option that best captures the essence of the passage.
Today, many of the debates about behavioural control in the age of big data echo Cold War-era anxieties about brainwashing, insidious manipulation and repression in the ‘technological society’. In his book Psychopolitics, Han warns of the sophisticated use of targeted online content, enabling ‘influence to take place on a pre-reflexive level’. On our current trajectory, “freedom will prove to have been merely an interlude.” The fear is that the digital age has not liberated us but exposed us, by offering up our private lives to machine-learning algorithms that can process masses of personal and behavioural data. In a world of influencers and digital entrepreneurs, it’s not easy to imagine the resurgence of a culture engendered through disconnect and disaffiliation, but concerns over the threat of online targeting, polarisation and big data have inspired recent polemics about the need to rediscover solitude and disconnect.
Answer & solution
- A
The notion of freedom and privacy is at stake in a world where artificial intelligence is capable of influencing behaviour through data gathered online.
- B
The role of technology in influencing public behaviour is reminiscent of the manner in which behaviour was manipulated during the Cold War.
With big data making personal information freely available, the debate on the nature of freedom and the need for privacy has resurfaced.
- D
Rather than freeing us, digital technology is enslaving us by collecting personal information and influencing our online behaviour.
Easy
The passage: today's anxieties about big-data behavioural control echo Cold-War fears; with our private lives exposed to machine-learning algorithms, the worry over freedom and privacy has re-emerged, reviving calls to disconnect. The essence couples big data exposing personal life with the resurfaced freedom/privacy debate.
States freedom and privacy "is at stake" because AI can influence behaviour. Captures part of it, but misses the central "echo / resurfaced" framing — the debate is a return of old anxieties. Incomplete.
Only restates the Cold-War analogy ("technology... reminiscent of... the Cold War"). That's the opening comparison, not the main claim about privacy and freedom. Too partial.
"With big data making personal information freely available, the debate on the nature of freedom and the need for privacy has resurfaced." Keeps both halves — data exposing us AND the resurfaced debate. Best fit.
Takes a definite stance ("digital technology is enslaving us"). The passage reports a fear/debate, not a settled verdict, and adds a hedge ("merely an interlude"). Too assertive — opinion, not summary.
Option C — big data exposes personal life, reviving the freedom-and-privacy debate.