A Challenge for a Primavera Digitale: The Phantom Influence of Artificial Intelligence Systems
A New Question?
How do fundamental and human rights emerge, and what conditions shape their emergence in the digital age? This exploration reflects on a puzzling social phenomenon: the widespread sense of comfort – or at least resignation – that individuals display toward phone applications, AI systems, and algorithmic decision-making tools that process personal data and shape life opportunities.
This comfort stands in sharp contrast to reactions toward interference in the physical world. Being watched by a person or a camera in public typically provokes discomfort. Yet, comparable forms of monitoring and profiling through digital systems often pass without scrutiny. Users rarely question how applications process data, whether they manipulate behavior, or how persuasive digital environments constrain autonomy.
The Disparity of Tolerance
This disparity raises foundational questions: Why do we tolerate digital interference so readily? What does this tolerance reveal about evolving expectations and vulnerabilities surrounding our rights? Existing human rights frameworks may not adequately capture the nature of power in the digital realm.
It is argued that the emergence of human rights in the digital environment is structurally constrained by what is termed the phantom influence of digital technologies. Drawing on an Arendtian understanding of rights, it is suggested that the architecture of advanced AI systems restricts the socio-political conditions under which rights traditionally emerge. This calls for renewed conceptual and institutional responses.
Understanding Human Rights in the Digital Realm
Before delving into the Arendtian perspective, it is necessary to situate the discussion within broader debates on the nature of human rights. Noted theorist John Tasioulas identifies three significant approaches:
- Reductive view: Grounds human rights in terms of human interests.
- Orthodox view: Treats human rights as moral rights grounded in humanity itself.
- Political view: Defines human rights through their function within international legal and political practice.
This discussion seeks not to critique these theories directly but to explore whether something distinctive about the digital realm challenges their assumptions. Specifically, can the rule of the algorithm open space for new digital human rights to emerge, or does it erode the socio-political foundations from which rights have traditionally arisen?
An Arendtian Account of Rights
To address this, one turns to the legal and political philosophy of Hannah Arendt. She argued that rights do not arise from mere humanity nor are they guaranteed by formal legal recognition alone. Instead, rights emerge in the space between law and lawlessness and through the capacity to act in a shared public realm.
In Arendt’s view, freedom is a political practice: to act is to initiate something new, to speak and appear before others within human relationships. This understanding has profound implications for digital environments. If rights depend on visibility and collective action, then the conditions under which digital power operates become legally and politically significant.
Features of Digital Systems
The architecture of advanced digital technologies systematically restricts the capacity to act in the Arendtian sense. This restriction arises not from overt coercion but from structural features of digital systems that obscure power relations and suppress political contestation. Three such features are identified:
- Virtuality: Digital platforms and AI systems are inherently virtual and non-physical. This virtuality weakens the conditions necessary for recognizing concrete interference with fundamental rights.
- Complexity: Many AI applications function as “black boxes,” producing outcomes without intelligible explanations. This complexity is compounded by deliberate design choices that increase opacity, making it challenging for users to contest outcomes.
- Dynamism: Digital technologies evolve rapidly, destabilizing legal categories and rendering regulatory responses perpetually reactive.
The Phantom Influence
These features render the tension between individual liberty and private power less visible. This phenomenon is described as AI’s phantom influence: a form of power that operates through virtuality, complexity, and constant transformation. Phantom influence diminishes the impact of core socio-political factors that would otherwise render the tension between individual freedoms and private power visible.
Digital technologies can empower rights, allowing social platforms to create alternative public spaces that enable expression, association, and political mobilization. However, these platforms are not neutral; their commercial nature ties them to the exploitation of networked communication.
Strengthening the Conditions for Rights
If the phantom influence weakens the socio-political conditions for rights, how might its effects be mitigated? Two promising avenues include:
- Civil Society Involvement: NGOs play a crucial role in documenting AI-related abuses and advocating for public interests.
- Judicial Interpretation: Courts can adapt existing rights to new realities, ensuring that rights remain “living” norms.
Conclusion: Toward a Primavera Digitale
Reflecting on the phantom influence of digital technologies reveals the necessity for intentional action to cultivate a meaningful digital environment for genuine engagement. Strengthening civil society participation and cultivating rights-sensitive judicial interpretation can help restore the conditions under which rights may emerge.
This envisioned space is a Primavera Digitale: a digital spring where individuals are active political agents, reclaiming the internet as a domain of speech, creativity, and action.
