Digital self-determination
Broadly speaking, the term describes the attempt to comprehensively project the pattern of human self-determination (as first explored in disciplines like philosophy and psychology, and in the law) into the digital age.
The concept has been included in an official document for the first time by ARCEP, the French Telecoms Regulator, in a section of its 2021 Report on the State of the Internet,[1] exploring the work on "Network Self-determination"[2] conducted by Professor Luca Belli.
The pattern of self-determination similarly aims at enabling autonomous human beings to create, choose and pursue their own identity, action, and life choices without undue interference.
The concept gained traction at the Latin American level, starting to form a core element of research and policy proposals dedicated to community networks.
"[16] In October 2021, an International Network on Digital Self-Determination [17] was created with the intention of "bringing together diverse perspectives from different fields around the world to study and design ways to engage in trustworthy data spaces and ensure human centric approaches.
Ensuring a wide representation of diverse realities on digital platforms could be a way of increasing exposure to conflicting viewpoints and avoiding intellectual isolation into informational bubbles.
To guard against the challenges to individuals' privacy and self-determination, various alternative data governance models have been recently proposed around the world, including trusts,[32] commons,[33] cooperative,[34] collaboratives,[35] fiduciaries,[36] and "pods".
[38] An individual's exercising of self-agency can be intimately connected to the digital environments one is embedded in, which can shape one's choice architecture, access to information and opportunities as well as exposure to harm and exploitation, thereby affecting the person's capacity to freely and autonomously conduct his or her life.
A variety of digital technologies and their underlying infrastructure, regardless of their relatively visible or indirect human interfaces, could contribute to conditions that empower or disempower an individual's self-determination in the spheres of socio-economic participation, representation of cultural identity and political expression.
To this end, recent class actions and regulation efforts Tech firms can be promising examples in the context of pushing the private sector to adopt more privacy-preserving practices on children which can provide a golden shield for their autonomy.
Regarding this, article 8 of the GDPR provides a set of age limits on the processing of personal data of children related to the information society services(ISS).
History articulates that state policy in fields as diverse as health, education, housing, public works, employment, and justice had, and continue to have, negative effects on indigenous peoples after independence.
Alongside these political tensions, economic interests have manipulated legal and governance frameworks to extract value and resources from former colonized territories, often without adequate compensation or consultation to impacted individuals and communities.
As a result, "code is law" in the sense that it has the power to usurp legal, institutional, and social norms impacting the political, economic, and cultural domains of society.
It may be under the guise of protecting an organisation from spam and illicit, harmful cyber-attacks, but has the secondary outcome of blocking or filtering out communities who only have access through cheaper portals.
The authors refer to the material dimension as the most cited concern regarding introducing technology as part of the curriculum, arguing that "the lack of power infrastructure in lower socio-economic areas and exorbitant data costs, impact some students' ability to access their learning resources.
"[82] According to the report, "frequent and prolonged internet shutdowns enact a profound digital apartheid by systematically and structurally depriving the people of Kashmir of the means to participate in a highly networked and digitised world.
It was noted to have affected at least a thousand employees working in this sector[83] just in the third month of the world's longest internet shutdown that began on the intervening night of 4 and 5 August 2019 across Jammu and Kashmir.
All employees and producers have been rendered jobless [..] I have to work by hook or by crook to meet the damage inflicted by loss of customers, undelivered orders and accumulated goods after the non-availability of Internet.
"[85] In June 2020, it was reported for the first time how non-local companies were able to bag a majority of contracts online for mining of mineral blocks, as locals were left at a disadvantage due to the ban on high speed internet.
[86] The effect of this digital apartheid was also witnessed during the lockdown induced by the Covid-19 pandemic leaving the healthcare infrastructure crippled as doctors complained about not being able to access information or attend trainings on coronavirus owing to the restricted internet.
The importance of embedding the fundamental values into the legislative frameworks regulating the digital sphere has been stressed numerous times by scholars,[91] public authorities, and representatives of various organizations.
Subsequently, the EU has pursued the abovementioned objectives through the adoption or proposal of several legal instruments including: The U.S. has yet to introduce a comprehensive information privacy law; legislation pertaining to data and digital rights currently exists at both the state and federal level and is often sector-specific.
In the United States, The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) is tasked with overseeing the protection of consumers' digital privacy and security, outlining fair information practice principles for the governance of online spaces.
From algorithmic recommendation in e-commerce[98] and social media platforms,[99] smart surveillance in policing,[100] to automated resources allocation in public services,[101] the extent of possible AI applications that can influence an individual's autonomy is continuously contested, considering the widespread datafication of people's lives across the socio-economic and political spheres today.
In the United States, an AI recruiting tool used by Amazon has shown to discriminate against female job applicants,[104] while an AI-based modelling tool used by the Department of Human Services in Allegheny County, Pennsylvania, to flag potential child abuse has shown to disproportionately profile the poor and racial minority, raising questions about how predictive variables in algorithms could often be "abstractions" that "reflect priorities and preoccupations".
In recent years, there has been a proliferation of high-level principles and guidelines documents,[106] providing suggestions for public-sector policies and private-sector code of conduct in a non-binding manner.
Compared to the binding laws enacted by states, the landscape of AI ethics principles paints a more diverse picture, with governmental and nongovernmental organisations including private companies, academic institutions and civic society actively developing the ecosystem.
A 2020 publication by the Berkman Klein Center for Internet and Society at Harvard University studied thirty-six "especially visible or influential" AI principles documents authored by government and non-governmental actors from multiple geographical regions, and identified eight key themes: However, the report also notes "a wide and thorny gap between the articulation of these high-level concepts and their actual achievement in the real world".
Cultural and geographical representation has been highlighted as a challenge in ensuring the burgeoning AI norms sufficiently consider unique opportunities and risks faced by the global population, who exercise their autonomy and freedom in vastly different political regimes with varying degrees of rule of law.
