Illusions of Agency?:Artificial Intelligence and Assembly (Online)

Hamilton, Michael (2024) Illusions of Agency?:Artificial Intelligence and Assembly (Online). In: AI and Assembly: Coming Together in a Datafied World. Stanford University Press. (In Press)

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Abstract

While the right of peaceful assembly is predominantly associated with physical forms of co-presence (street protests, marches, occupations and the like), it has more recently been recognized as a right also capable of being exercised in digitally mediated spaces. Attempts to advocate for and to understand this spatial extension to the scope of the right have been characterised by analogical reasoning that likens privately owned internet platforms to shopping malls, nature reserves, libraries, or soap boxes all enabling modern day town criers and pamphleteers. This chapter questions such analogical reasoning, arguing that human rights safeguards must instead take account of finespun distinctions between heteromorphic ‘participants’, different digital spaces, the algorithms through which they are ordered, and the particular kinds of interference with assembly that Artificial Intelligence (AI) enacts. Looking beyond familiar preoccupations with AI driven content moderation and curation, the chapter considers (by way of example) how interactions between humans and AI-powered chatbots in online assemblies – and the prospect of AI generated ‘astroturfing’ – forefront questions about the nature of authenticity and agency in assemblies. These questions have never been adequately addressed in the assembly jurisprudence, but (to borrow the term coined by Taina Bucher) they warrant close ‘technographic inquiry’.

Item Type:	Book Section
Faculty \ School:	Faculty of Social Sciences > School of Law
Depositing User:	LivePure Connector
Date Deposited:	20 Jun 2024 08:30
Last Modified:	20 Jun 2024 08:30
URI:	https://ueaeprints.uea.ac.uk/id/eprint/95639
DOI:

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