Constitutional Challenges in the Emotional AI Era
Constitutional Challenges in the Emotional AI Era
Valcke, P, Clifford, D & Steponėnaitė, V.K. forthcoming, ‘Constitutional Challenges in the Emotional AI Era’, in Giovanni De Gregorio et al. (eds.), Constitutional Challenges in the Algorithmic Society, CUP.
The chapter discusses legal-ethical challenges posed by the emergence of emotional artificial intelligence (AI) and its manipulative capabilities. The focus lies on the European legal framework and on the use of emotional AI for commercial business-to-consumer purposes, although some observations are also valid for the public sector, or in the context of political micro-targeting or fake news. On the basis of a literature review, the chapter addresses privacy and data protection concerns, challenges to individual autonomy and human dignity as overarching values. It also presents a number of responses, specifically those suggesting the introduction of new (constitutional) rights to mitigate the potential negative effects of such developments and it provides the foundation for a future research agenda in that direction. The chapter is based on the key note delivered by P. Valcke at the inaugural conference “Constitutional Challenges in the Algorithmic Society” of the IACL Research Group on Algorithmic State Market & Society – Constitutional Dimensions”, which was held from 9 to 11 May 2019 in Florence (Italy). It draws heavily from the PhD Thesis of D. Clifford, entitled “The Legal Limits To The Monetisation Of Online Emotions” and defended at KU Leuven – Faculty of Law on July 3, 2019, to which the reader is referred for a more in-depth discussion.