This paper analyzes a contemporary conception of digital despotism through themes drawn from classical Greek philosophy. By taking as a measure some of the most radically excluded categories of human existence, Aristotle’s slave and slavish types, I offer a way to understand digital despotism as a syndrome of overlapping risks to human impairment, brought about by the advent of automated data processing technologies, which dispossesses people along i) ontological and ii) cognitive dimensions. This conception aims to balance the appeal to (...) the _language_ of slavery in recent global historical, Marxist, republican, and postcolonial discourses on digital technology, while distinguishing itself from the coercive, material violence involved in the experiences of slavery itself. Unlike prior conceptions, this thematic idea of digital despotism moreover suggests political vulnerability to forms of despotic rule and integrates various risk factors that can therefore be better recognized in both policy intervention, and individual and/or collective resistance. (shrink)

Artificial Intelligence (AI) technologies offer new ways of conducting decision-making tasks that influence the daily lives of citizens, such as coordinating traffic, energy distributions, and crowd flows. They can sort, rank, and prioritize the distribution of fines or public funds and resources. Many of the changes that AI technologies promise to bring to such tasks pertain to decisions that are collectively binding. When these technologies become part of critical infrastructures, such as energy networks, citizens are affected by these decisions whether (...) they like it or not, and they usually do not have much say in them. The democratic challenge for those working on AI technologies with collectively binding effects is both to _develop_ and _deploy_ technologies in such a way that the democratic legitimacy of the relevant decisions is safeguarded. In this paper, we develop a conceptual framework to help policymakers, project managers, innovators, and technologists to assess and develop approaches to democratize AI. This framework embraces a broad sociotechnical perspective that highlights the interactions between technology and the complexities and contingencies of the context in which these technologies are embedded. We start from the problem-based and practice-oriented approach to democracy theory as developed by political theorist Mark Warren. We build on this approach to describe practices that can enhance or challenge democracy in political systems and extend it to integrate a sociotechnical perspective and make the role of technology explicit. We then examine how AI technologies can play a role in these practices to improve or inhibit the democratic nature of political systems. We focus in particular on AI-supported political systems in the energy domain. (shrink)

This paper argues that regulatory agencies have a responsibility to further the public interest when they determine the conditions under which new technological products may be commercialized. As a case study, this paper analyzes the US 9th Circuit Court’s ruling on the efforts of the US Environmental Protection Agency to regulate an herbicide meant for use with seed that are genetically modified to be tolerant of the chemical. Using that case, it is argued that when regulatory agencies evaluate new technological (...) products, they have an obligation to draw on data, analyses, and evaluations from a variety of credible epistemic sources, and not rely solely or even primarily on the technology developer. Otherwise, they create conditions for their own domination and that of the polity by the technology developer. Moreover, in the interest of advancing the public interest, regulatory agencies must evaluate new technologies in a substantively and procedurally unbiased manner. (shrink)

Digital sovereignty is a term increasingly used by academics and policymakers to describe efforts by states, private companies, and citizen groups to assert control over digital technologies. This descriptive conception of digital sovereignty is normatively deficient as it centres discussion on how power is being asserted rather than evaluating whether actions are legitimate. In this article, I argue that digital sovereignty should be understood as a normative concept that centres on authority (i.e., legitimate control). A normative approach to digital sovereignty (...) is beneficial as it supports critical discourse about the desirability of actors’ assertions of control. It is also more closely aligned with traditional definitions of sovereignty that are grounded in ideas of sovereign authority. To operationalise this normative approach to digital sovereignty and demonstrate the deficiencies of a descriptive approach, the role that “Big Tech” companies are playing in controlling artificial intelligence is considered from both perspectives. Through this case study, it is highlighted that Big Tech companies assert a high degree of control (i.e., descriptive digital sovereignty), but that they lack strong input legitimacy and have a questionable amount of output legitimacy. For this reason, it is argued that Big Tech companies should only be considered quasi-sovereigns over AI. (shrink)

In April 2020, in the midst of its first pandemic lockdown, the Dutch government announced plans to develop a contact tracing app to help contain the spread of the coronavirus – the _Coronamelder._ Originally intended to address the problem of the overburdening of manual contract tracers, by the time the app was released six months later, the problem it sought to solve had drastically changed, without the solution undergoing any modification, making it a prime example of technosolutionism. While numerous critics (...) have mobilised the concept of technosolutionism, the questions of how technosolutionism works in practice and which specific harms it can provoke have been understudied. In this paper we advance a thick conception of technosolutionism which, drawing on Evgeny Morozov, distinguishes it from the notion of technological fix, and, drawing on constructivism, emphasizes its constructivist dimension. Using this concept, we closely follow the problem that the Coronamelder aimed to solve and how it shifted over time to fit the Coronamelder solution, rather than the other way around. We argue that, although problems are always constructed, technosolutionist problems are _badly_ constructed, insofar as the careful and cautious deliberation which should accompany problem construction in public policy is absent in the case of technosolutionism. This can lead to three harms: a subversion of democratic decision-making; the presence of powerful new actors in the public policy context – here Big Tech; and the creation of “orphan problems”, whereby the initial problems that triggered the need to develop a (techno)solution are left behind. We question whether the most popular form of technology ethics today, which focuses predominantly on the _design_ of technology, is well-equipped to address these technosolutionist harms, insofar as such a focus may preclude critical thinking about whether or not technology should be the solution in the first place. (shrink)

This article critically examines the domination exerted by big digital companies on the current social, economic, and political context of modern societies, with a particular focus on the implications for the proper functioning of democracy. The objective of this article is to introduce and develop the concept of datafeudalism, expose its emergence for the proper functioning of modern societies and democracy, and to propose courses of action to reverse this situation. To achieve this purpose, firstly, the evolution from surveillance capitalism (...) to datafeudalism will be discussed. Secondly, the structures and operating logic of data feudalism will be analyzed. Thirdly, the harmful impacts of datafeudalism on the proper functioning of the democratic systems of the European Union will be examined. Finally, an attempt will be made to outline courses of action that will make it possible to reverse the situation of economic, social and political tyranny exercised by big digital companies through datafeudalism. (shrink)

In this paper, I approach the power of digital platforms by using the republican concept of domination. More specifically, I argue that the traditional, agent-relative interpretation of domination, in the case of digital domination, is best supplemented by a more radical version, on which republicans ought to give priority to structural elements. I show how radical republicanism draws attention to (1) the economic rationales and the socio-technical infrastructures that underlie and support digital platforms and to (2) the forms of influence (...) that are directed at cognitive dimensions, such as habituation and routinisation, which are particularly relevant for the power of digital platforms. These insights also imply that republicans have reason to favour a more structural response to digital platforms over more direct and individualised forms of control that fit with a ‘standard’ republican approach, such as securing exit options and requiring user consent. (shrink)

As information technologies have become synonymous with progress in modern society, several ethical concerns have surfaced about their societal implications. In the past few decades, information technologies have had a value-laden impact on social evolution. However, there is limited agreement on the responsibility of businesses and innovators concerning the ethical aspects of information technologies. There is a need to understand the role of business incentives and attitudes in driving technological progress and to understand how they steer the ethics discourse on (...) technology. In the information technology industry, there is an observed trivialization of ethics supported by a business driven and technology-centric approach to ethics. This trivialization rests on hardened beliefs, ideologies, and arguments which hint at reduced accountability for business and tend to individualize social responsibility. The phenomenon of ethics trivialization needs to be duly addressed to resolve the tensions between business needs and ethical concerns. This paper has identified from literature and conceptually analyzed the beliefs and ideologies underlying ethics trivialization which undermine ethics in business contexts. The paper has attempted to address the business concerns indicated by this phenomenon as well as highlight the weaknesses of its assumptions, rhetoric, and justifications. The aim of this paper is to systematically present the justifications in favor of and against the practice of ethics trivialization in the information technology domain, thereby highlighting the need to develop frameworks for assessment of ethical responsibility, accountability, and democratization of the value trade-offs involved in the design of technologies. (shrink)

In various official documents, the European Union has declared its goal to pursue a citizen-centric governance of digital transformation. Through a critical review of several of these documents, here we show how “citizen-centric” is more a glamouring than a driving concept. De facto, the EU is enabling a federated data system that is corporate-driven, economic-oriented, and GDPR-compliant; in other words, a Digital Single Market (DSM). This leaves out societal and collective-level dimensions of digital transformation—such as social inclusion, digital sovereignty, and (...) environmental sustainability—which are acknowledged, but not operationalized, by the EU as pillars of a citizen-centric governance. Hence, the door is open to a complementary approach to the governance of digital transformation. We argue that, while a federated data model can constitute the tech-legal backbone of the emerging DSM, a commoning of data, as an ecosystemic approach that maintains a societal and collective outlook by default, can represent a complement to enact a truly citizen-centric governance. (shrink)