Jonne Maas proposes three analyses to understand such digital domination based on an interactional, marginalized, and socio-economic perspective. From the interactional perspective, digital artefacts dominate due to arbitrary interference in one’s basic liberties. Maas argues this perspective is insufficient for similar reasons raised in the paradigmatic ‘mugger’ case, namely, who is dominated and when. A potential solution is the marginalized perspective, according to which only the groups that systematically face negative consequences are dominated. Maas rejects this perspective as a source of digital domination. Instead, she proposes a perspective based on our current socio-economic market structures that leave innovators relatively unrestricted in developing and deploying automated-decision systems. While not digital in itself, such innovative domination only applies to markets that are relatively unrestricted, such as the digital sphere. On this view, digital domination thus is a symptom of our underlying socio-economic order.

For the Zoom link, please send an email to pept@uva.nl.

The speakers

Jonne Maas is a PhD candidate at Delft University of Technology. Her project focuses on the power relations underlying AI development and deployment, which she approaches from a neo-republican perspective. Her work is part of the European Consortium Humane-AI Network. She is also affiliated with the Dutch Hybrid Intelligence gravitation project and the MINT Lab at ANU. Besides her PhD project, she works as managing editor for the Journal of Ethics and Information Technology.

Annemijn Kwikkers will be moderating the PEPTalk. Annemijn Kwikkers is a PhD student in philosophy at the University of Amsterdam. Her project, as part of the AlgoSoc consortium, is about the change of democratic public values in an algorithmic society. She specifically focuses on the deployment of algorithmic decision-systems for both the creation and dissemination of news and information and how this may influence the way people are informed about democratically relevant matters.