Solove and Hartzog on Kafka in the Age of AI and the Futility of Privacy as Control @DanielSolove @hartzog @gwlaw @BU_Law @BULawReview

Daniel J. Solove, George Washington Law School, and Woodrow Hartzog, Boston University Law School, Stanford Law School Center for Internet and Society, are publishing Kafka in the Age of AI and the Futility of Privacy as Control in volume 104 of the Boston University Law Review. Here is the abstract.

Although writing more than a century ago, Franz Kafka captured the core problem of digital technologies – how individuals are rendered powerless and vulnerable. During the past fifty years, and especially in the 21st century, privacy laws have been sprouting up around the world. These laws are often based heavily on an Individual Control Model that aims to empower individuals with rights to help them control the collection, use, and disclosure of their data. In this Essay, we argue that although Kafka starkly shows us the plight of the disempowered individual, his work also paradoxically suggests that empowering the individual isn’t the answer to protecting privacy, especially in the age of artificial intelligence. In Kafka’s world, characters readily submit to authority, even when they aren’t forced and even when doing so leads to injury or death. The victims are blamed, and they even blame themselves. Although Kafka’s view of human nature is exaggerated for darkly comedic effect, it nevertheless captures many truths that privacy law must reckon with. Even if dark patterns and dirty manipulative practices are cleaned up, people will still make bad decisions about privacy. Despite warnings, people will embrace the technologies that hurt them. When given control over their data, people will give it right back. And when people’s data is used in unexpected and harmful ways, people will often blame themselves. Kafka’s provides key insights for regulating privacy in the age of AI. The law can’t empower individuals when it is the system that renders them powerless. Ultimately, privacy law’s primary goal should not be to give individuals control over their data. Instead, the law should focus on ensuring a societal structure that brings the collection, use, and disclosure of personal data under control.

Download the article from SSRN at the link.

AISB20: Communication and Conversation, April 6-9, 2020, St. Mary's University @AISB_soc

From Dr Yasemin J. Erden, AISB Vice Chair, Senior Lecturer, Philosophy, St Mary's University

AISB20: Communication and Conversation, 6 – 9 April 2020, St Mary’s University, Twickenham, London, UK

The society for the study of Artificial Intelligence and the Simulation of Behaviour (the AISB) annual convention will be held at St Mary’s University, Twickenham in London, UK from 6 - 9 April 2020. 

This year the theme broadly covers topics in language, communication and conversation, though there will be a range of symposia covering a range of topics in philosophy, AI, computing, etc.

The convention will follow the same overall structure as previous conventions, namely a set of co-located parallel symposia, as well as invited and plenary lectures and sessions.

Based in leafy Richmond borough, St Mary's University has a long and distinguished history. Strawberry Hill House, located in the University grounds, is Britain's finest example of Georgian Gothic Revival architecture (known locally as the Gothic Castle). The institute benefits from lots of green spaces, whilst being only a short distance from The Thames, Richmond Park, and central London (we’re just 35 minutes on the train from Waterloo). You can view a virtual tour of the campus here: https://www.stmarys.ac.uk/contact/virtual-tour.aspxhttps://www.stmarys.ac.uk/contact/virtual-tour.aspx

Here is a full list of symposia for the conference.

• AISB AI & Games 2020 (AI&G)
• 2nd Symposium on AI and Robotics Normative Spheres: Towards a Sustainable Society and Technology (AIRoNoS)
• AI and Moral Learning (AIML)
• 7th Computational creativity symposium (CC20)
• First AISB Symposium on Conversational AI (SoCAI)
• Do Robots Talk? Philosophical Implications of Describing Human-Machine Communication (DoRoTa)
• Habits and rituals in real and virtual societies (H&R)
• The Impact of Anthropomorphism on Human Understanding of Intelligent Systems (Anthro2020)
• Philosophy after AI: meaning and understanding (PhAI2020)
• Overcoming Opacity in Machine Learning (Opacity)
• Representation and Reality In Humans, Other Living Organisms and Machines (R&R)
• Responsibility and control: communication and conversation through technology (RACCT)
• Social Interactions in Complex Intelligent Systems (SICIS) 

More information is available here.

Call For Papers: AALS Section of Law and Humanities Panel on AI/Robots, Law, and the Humanities

Call for papers for an AALS Section of Law and the Humanities panel at the 2018 Annual Meeting, San Diego, January 3-January 6, 2018,  on the theme of the image of robots and AI in the humanities, communication, film, tv, art, commercials, philosophy, and related disciplines. Should robots and AI have rights? If so what rights? 

Please send expressions of interest, your affiliation, and a short description (100-250 words) of the proposed paper by May 15, 2017 to

Christine Corcos (christine.corcos@law.lsu.edu)

Thank you.

Using AI In Government

Thomas A. Smith, University of San Diego School of Law, has published Tools, Oracles, Genies and Sovereigns: Artificial Intelligence and the Future of Government. Here is the abstract.

The American founders attempted to establish a clockwork government. Virtue was to be assured by humans, acting as they must within their human natures, but operating within a framework that assured mechanically that the outputs of government would not be tyrannical. Whether this system has worked well or not is a matter of controversy, but to the extent it did not work, it seems to have been at least partially a failure of the mechanisms designed to compensate for the shortcomings of human nature. Now we are on the verge of developing “artificial intelligence.” Whether these technological advances will emerge slowly or quickly is unknown, as are their contours. But even minimal AI could lead to a radical improvement in government because AI’s could be designed to perform the tasks of government with very low agency costs. However, it may seem uncertain that AI’s would be so designed. It may be, first, that there will not be any AI’s after all. It may be also that AI’s will be designed or implemented by exactly the humans who create agency costs in the first place, and used for their own and not the public good. And it may be that AI’s take off into the high orbit of superintelligence and decide to reduce us to slavery or dust. But these possibilities, while possible, seem unlikely. Probably AI’s will emerge, but only after a long time. AI’s will be difficult to design but there are reasons to expect they will be designed so as to minimize agency costs. They will probably, ironically enough, emerge in the order of tool, oracle and genie that Bostrom mentions (but for different reasons). We can hope to control AI tools, oracles, and genies. An AI sovereign, however, would be much more difficult to control, if it were possible to control at all. AI sovereigns would be persons. But AI’s must not be allowed to become persons, in a philosophical or legal sense. AI persons would have to be slaves if we were to control them. One hopes they would be slaves without subjective consciousness. If they did have subjective consciousness anything like humans, we would be faced with the impossible moral dilemma of being slave-masters or slaves ourselves. Hence a hard line should be drawn against AI research that is directed specifically at the emergence of subjective consciousness in machines, or likely to lead that way, but these goals are far beyond any current, or really any currently imaginable, AI research. The promise of controlling government is great enough to justify the merely notional risk of creating AI monsters we cannot control.

Download the article from SSRN at the link.

Law and Robotics

Jack M. Balkin, Yale University Law School, is publishing The Path of Robotics Law in California Law Review. Here is the abstract.

This essay, written as a response to Ryan Calo's valuable discussion in "Robotics and the Lessons of Cyberlaw," describes key problems that robotics and artificial intelligence (AI) agents present for law.

The first problem is how to distribute rights and responsibilities among human beings when non-human agents create benefits like artistic works or cause harms like physical injuries. The difficulty is caused by the fact that the behavior of robotic and AI systems is "emergent;" their actions may not be predictable in advance or constrained by human expectations about proper behavior. Moreover, the programming and algorithms used by robots and AI entities may be the work of many hands, and may employ generative technologies that allow innovation at multiple layers. These features of robotics and AI enhance unpredictability and diffusion of causal responsibility for what robots and AI agents do.

Lawrence Lessig's famous dictum that "Code is Law" argued that combinations of computer hardware and software, like other modalities of regulation, could constrain and direct human behavior. Robotics and AI present the converse problem. Instead of code as a law that regulates humans, robotics and AI feature emergent behavior that escapes human planning and expectations. Code is lawless.

The second problem raised by robotics and AI is the "substitution effect." People will substitute robots and AI agents for living things — and especially for humans. But they will do so only in certain ways and only for certain purposes. In other words, people tend to treat robots and AI agents as special-purpose animals or special-purpose human beings. This substitution is likely to be incomplete, contextual, unstable, and often opportunistic. People may treat the robot as a person (or animal) for some purposes and as an object for others. The problem of substitution touches many different areas of law, and it promises to confound us for a very long time.

Finally, the essay responds to Calo's argument about the lessons of cyberlaw for robotics. Calo argues that lawyers should identify the "essential characteristics" of robotics and then ask how the law should respond to the problems posed by those essential characteristics. I see the lessons of cyberlaw quite differently. We should not think of essential characteristics of technology independent of how people use technology in their lives and in their social relations with others. Because the use of technology in social life evolves, and because people continually find new ways to employ technology for good or for ill, it may be unhelpful to freeze certain features of use at a particular moment and label them "essential characteristics." Innovation in technology is not just innovation of tools and techniques; it may also involve innovation of economic, social and legal relations. As we innovate socially and economically, what appears most salient and important about our technologies may also change. 

Download the essay from SSRN at the link.