Konstanze Möller-Jansen // The impact of algorithmic rule – a normative evaluation from the perspective of freedom as non-domination

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Konstanze Möller-Jansen M.A.

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Professur für Praktische Philosophie (Prof. Dr. Tamara Jugov)

Professur für Praktische Philosophie (Prof. Dr. Tamara Jugov)

Research project: The impact of algorithmic rule – a normative evaluation from the perspective of freedom as non-domination

Subject: Philosophy
Mentoring professor:Prof. Dr. Tamara Jugov

The aim of this dissertation is a normative assessment of the domination potential of digital technologies, such as algorithmic decision-making systems, AI, and big data.

By now, the application of these technologies permeates areas as different as the labor market, finance, communication, mobility, or medicine. They have become not only ubiquitous, but disengagement is now almost impossible. In addition, negative impacts through data surveillance, discriminating and opaque algorithms or privacy infringements have become more common.

Increasingly, philosophers have paid attention to the fact that there is a dimension of power at the core of the problem. There is, however, a lot of ambiguity towards the right normative framing of this kind of power. Whether it is concentration of power at the level of big tech companies (Taylor 2020, Rafanelli 2022) or rather an infrastructure (Hasselbalch 2021) or algorithmic governance system (Danaher forthcoming) that arbitrarily regulates behavior, is contested.

The main thesis of the dissertation at hand is this: Both the unchecked power of tech corporations as well as the possible existence of a “rule of algorithms” make us vulnerable (or already subject) to domination. Constant surveillance, nudging and subtle manipulation are not only privacy infringements, but substantial threats to our freedom as non-domination (Saetra 2019, Gräf 2017).

A particular focus of this dissertation project is the question of structural domination: When algorithmic decision-making systems or AI are to be understood as socio-technological infrastructure or as a governance system that structure, nudge or encourage behavior, but not through an agent’s arbitrary will, can we still speak of unfreedom? 25.01.2023

CV

Research Interests

• Political philosophy
• philosophy of emerging technologies, such as AI, big data, computer algorithms
• neo-republicanism, freedom, and questions of structural domination
• privacy
• relation between power and technology

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• Philosophie-Institut der TUD