Citizens 3.0 - Who should control the powerful technologies that govern our lives?

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Technologies that have the capacity to seriously impact upon individuals and democratic politics, through processes such as surveillance, big data and artificial intelligence, develop apace. However, protections against the potential harms brought by such technologies have not yet provided a coherent defence. Most particularly it seems that privacy may no longer be the most accurate paradigm to understand the harms of these technologies. The aims of this project are to communicate a new and important analysis of such powerful technologies, one which provides a language with which to justify making citizens the meaningful authors of the rulesthat govern these technologies. For example, combining mass data collection and big data analysis, it is alleged that CambridgeAnalytica, a private data firm, recently interfered in the US presidential election of 2016 (Grassegger,Krogerus, 2017, Cadwalladr, 2018). Other less well publicised companies operate within this area as well (Polonski, 2017). The extent of the influence these firms have is not yet clear. However, what is clear is the capacity to gather, process and analyse personal data on a staggering scale - Cambridge Analytica has psychological profiles of 230 million US citizens' data (Cadwallr, 2018) - and to use deep algorithmic networks to then manipulate the information people receive in order to influence their democratic choices (Polonski in Thorsen et al 2017). Manipulation is not new to politics, but what is new here is the cumulative and unrestrained power that these technologies have, and the opacity with which, and by whom, they are operated. Into this current scenario comes a rapidly developing Artificial Intelligence (AI) sector, driven primarily by private companies like Google's DeepMind and Facebook's AI, that has the capacity to programme its own algorithms, which can, as an example, conduct heuristic analysis of our street behaviour, or behavioural modelling of our personal relationships, in order to produce results beyond the comprehension of human operators (Bostrom 2014). Not only will we be unsure who is collecting our data in order to influence elections, model our behaviour in the street, or analyse our online relationships, but it may be unclear just what is doing this, and why it is doing it. Crucially, the harms potentially caused by this do not hinge on whether they intrude upon our privacy. Rather, what seems important now is whether we as individuals and as a society have any say in, or understanding of, the rules which govern technologies that can be so influential on our democracies and our behaviour. Drawing on a conception of freedom which considers this type of power as harmful to freedom and democracy, my project will provide a coherent framework to justify democratically controlling and harnessing the power contained in these technologies. Contemporary republicans thinkers (Pettit 1997, Skinner 1998, 2008) have in recent decades promoted an alternative view of freedom. Drawing on neo-roman republican thought, they have shown a different understanding to the 'non-interference' conception of freedom which underpins the individualised and rights based understanding of liberty and privacy. Instead, they tell us, if we do not have a proper understanding of the laws that govern us, we do not fully know the consequences that our behaviour may bring from authorities, and we are not in some way the authors of the rules that control our lives, then, we are exposed to arbitrary power in a way that is 'dominating'. In this situation, regardless of our formal rights, we are 'unfree'. My post-doctoral fellowship project will apply this conception of freedom, self-government and power to technology, and posit the problem of technology from a new angle, beyond privacy and data protections, to ask: if we as individuals are not the authors of the rules that govern these remarkably powerful technologies, are we really free?