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AI & Glocalization in Law, Volume 1 (2020)
optical and proximity indicators to have an emotional intelligence – what has been dubbed as “affective computing” (PINKER, 2002). Thus, even if AI cannot have emotions, it can still express them. Even that former impossibility should not be ruled out for long. The question then becomes that of when rather than if. So being “human” does not become a criteria for granting of a legal personality (GRAY, 1921). It is also not necessary that all “groups” are granted all constitutional rights. For example, corporations and partnerships do not have the right to vote. The trend in recent years has been that there is a distinct legal status, like an electronic personhood, that is created for AI (Parliament, 2017). The European Parliament in 2017 recognized the urgent need to recognise the potential harm that may be caused by more sophisticated robot individuals, so they may be called upon to do good any damage that is caused by them. In 2019 however, this stance was reduced to functional reasoning by the Expert Group on Liability and New Technologies appointed by the European Commission (“Expert Group”) (Group, 2018) wherein the Expert Group denied the need of defining an electronic personhood as currently, the liability is reducible to those attributable to their creators who are usually natural persons. This stance of the Expert Group is valid to the extent that currently most AIs are operated by corporations (Group, 2018). There are layers of shareholders between the company and the AI itself. Adding another layer of electronic personhood would not serve any purpose that would help in making the legal process more efficient. However, leaving it at that would be turning a blind eye to potential cases, now or in the future, which would warrant some form of personhood to be attributed to the machine. Summarily, that maybe achieved by either i) extending onto the machines the concept of legal personhood as it exists for entities like corporations and NGOs; or ii) create an entirely different notion of juridical personhood for the machine called the “electronic personhood” with specific regulations. 3.
AI as a Moderator of Speech
The other set of problems that we previously discussed revolve around how the AI influences or moderates human speech. Thus, the next logical line of enquiry should be whether the conduct of AI which seeks to interfere with the freedom of speech and expression of natural persons. The harms caused to an individual by limiting their exposure to information cannot be understated. These external interferences can be regulated and protected against, for here not the speech, but the speaker, or the source, itself is under scrutiny. For most platforms, AI acts the first line of defense when it comes to preventing illicit and inflammatory content being displayed on the platform (Content moderation, AI, and the question of scale., 2020). However, the user has no control