Stay Human. The quest for Responsibility in the Algorithmic Society

Abstract: recent developments of Artificial Intelligence based on machine learning techniques through Big Data raise multiple ethical and legal concerns, all of which ultimately do turn around the issues of responsibility, which is increasingly invoked not as a remedy but as a character which shall shape the whole development process of AI as well as its functioning. The characters of AI, taken in its technical and social role, challenge some established ideas related to human agency, namely responsibility. Recently two scholars like Jack Balkin (director of the Yale Information Society Project he founded on 1997) and Frank Pasquale (author of The Black Box Society: The Secret Algorithms That Control Money and Information, 2015) proposed \u201cnew laws of robotics for the Algorithmic Society\u201d inspired to Isaac Asimov\u2019s ones, but targeting the human agents behind the development and the use of AI. On the other side, Responsible Research and Innovation model has been proposed as a model for the responsible development of AI. Whilst the reference to responsibility is appealing, nevertheless the inflation of its disparate usages may obscure the meaning associated with it. This article wants to contribute to the understanding of the issues behind the idea of preserving the human character of responsibility when confronted to the risks of its dissolution induced by the increasingly relevant roles played by AI in our societies

Responsible Research and Innovation between \u201cnew governance\u201d and fundamental rights

This chapter frames RRI as an emerging governance approach in the EU regulatory context. We argue that reference to fundamental rights makes RRI a distinctive approach to responsibility compared to other existing paradigms and that human rights, in particular those laid down in the Charter of Fundamental Rights of the European Union, are not necessarily a constraint but can instead be a catalyst of innovation. Eventually we maintain that a governance framework based on the complementarity between legal norms and voluntary commitments might successfully combine the respect of fundamental rights with the openness and flexibility of the innovation process

RRI as a governance paradigm: What is new?

This chapter frames RRI as an emerging governance approach in the EU regulatory context. We argue that reference to fundamental rights makes RRI a distinctive approach to responsibility compared to other existing paradigms and that human rights, in particular those laid down in the Charter of Fundamental Rights of the European Union, are not necessarily a constraint but can instead be a catalyst of innovation. Eventually we maintain that a governance framework based on the complementarity between legal norms and voluntary commitments might successfully combine the respect of fundamental rights with the openness and flexibility of the innovation process

RRI as a governance paradigm: What is new?

This chapter frames RRI as an emerging governance approach in the EU regulatory context. We argue that reference to fundamental rights makes RRI a distinctive approach to responsibility compared to other existing paradigms and that human rights, in particular those laid down in the Charter of Fundamental Rights of the European Union, are not necessarily a constraint but can instead be a catalyst of innovation. Eventually we maintain that a governance framework based on the complementarity between legal norms and voluntary commitments might successfully combine the respect of fundamental rights with the openness and flexibility of the innovation process

Voluntary measures, participation and fundamental rights in the governance of research and innovation

Responsible Research and Innovation (RRI) aims at being a new governance paradigm aiming at steering the innovation process in a participative manner by constructing responsibility as a shared process between innovators and societal stakeholders, rather than a remedy to its failures. In order to achieve those goals, RRI implements a collaborative and inclusive process between innovators and societal stakeholders, widely based on the idea of granting a wider participation of societal actors to the innovation process. The purpose of steering the research and innovation processes through participation of societal actors is one of the distinguishing characteristics of RRI approach, which this way aims at taking into account the increasing political implications of scientific innovation. In order to do so, RRI model promotes governance strategies focusing on actors’ responsibilisation, which make appeal to actors’ capacity of reciprocal commitment towards some common goals not mandated by the law. Whilst voluntary non-binding regulatory approaches seem to be the ‘natural’ way to implement RRI in practice, nevertheless some concern remains about the scope and the limits of the contextual agreements reached each time, in particular their capacity to grant respect to some fundamental values, which are part of the European political and legal culture, and which are at risk to become freely re-negotiable within the RRI context if we base it only on the idea of autonomy, participation and consent. On the contrary, the paper argues that, if it wants to be coherent with its premises, RRI governance model needs to be complemented with a reference to fundamental rights, in order to give normative anchor-points to the confrontations between divergent views and values accompanying the development of technological innovation

Per una responsabilit\ue0\ua0 progettuale. Sul significato prospettico della responsabilit\ue0\ua0 giuridica

Sul piano della riflessione etica Hans Jonas ha elaborato il \uabprincipio responsabilit\ue0\ubb quale nuovo paradigma dell\u2019etica nei confronti delle generazioni future. L\u2019elaborazione di un modello prospettico (o progettuale) di responsabilit\ue0 appare pi\uf9 problematica in campo giuridico, dove essa ha un orientamento essenzialmente retrospettivo. In alcuni studi contemporanei dedicati alla responsabilit\ue0 \ue8 tuttavia possibile cogliere un comune tentativo di svincolare l\u2019idea giuridica di responsabilit\ue0 dall\u2019orientamento retrospettivo prevalentemente assegnatole in seno alla riflessione teorico-giuridica

(Pre)caution Improvisation Area

At first sight, law and improvisation do not appear to have much in common. Law is (or at least aims to be) the realm of rules and certainty, while improvisation is the realm of unheard sounds and unpredictable patterns. Law allows room for interpretation, but does it allow room for improvisation? The precautionary principle shapes a prospective form of legal responsibility rather than the traditional retrospective one, designing a responsibility in exercise, which can be included in Herbert Hart's category of “role-responsibility.” Improvisation can be taken as a paradigm explaining the ways in which precaution operates, adding a new dimension to our comprehension of responsibility

Il principio di precauzione e la governance dell\u2019incertezza

In questo contributo, dopo a) aver sinteticamente ricostruito l\u2019emersione giuridica del principio di precauzione, vorrei b) discutere brevemente la questione della natura giuridica del principio di precauzione, per poi c) esaminare alcune delle implicazioni extragiuridiche del principio, segnatamente mostrando come la logica intrinseca del principio di precauzione implichi una stretta connessione con esigenze e forme proprie di una concezione partecipativa della democrazia

Reflecting on Identity and Autonomy in a Datafied Society with Paul Ricœur

Embodied subjects of experience in the physical world, we inhabit cyberspace as “dividuals” composed of fragmented and dispersed data as a result of the operations performed by algorithms. Within the context of an “algorithmic society” (Balkin, 2017) the intersubjective process of identity building is replaced by algorithmic processes. This leads to a “mortification of the self” since this is not just a computational operation but also a moral experience. In order to react to this situation some authors invoked the fundamental incomputable nature of the self explicitly relying on Ricoeur’s distinction between identity-idem and identity-ipse, and further arguing that this shall represent the core understanding of privacy (Hildebrandt, 2019). Other authors proposed a performative theory of digital citizenship centered on the idea of claiming rights: here I argue that Ricoeur’s reflection on the Self constituted as a subject of rights may complement this theory and that, in its turn, the latter may provide a valuable reference for reading and integrating Ricoeur’s analysis