How can the law address the constitutional challenges of the algorithmic society? This volume provides possible solutions.

How to protect rights and limit powers in the algorithmic society? This book searches for answers in European digital constitutionalism.

As the power and sophistication of of 'big data' and predictive analytics has continued to expand, so too has policy and public concern about the use of algorithms in contemporary life. This is hardly surprising given our increasing reliance on algorithms in daily life, touching policy sectors from healthcare, transport, finance, consumer retail, manufacturing education, and employment through to public service provision and the operation of the criminal justice system. This has prompted concerns about the need and importance of holding algorithmic power to account, yet it is far from clear that existing legal and other oversight mechanisms are up to the task. This collection of essays, edited by two leading regulatory governance scholars, offers a critical exploration of 'algorithmic regulation', understood both as a means for co-ordinating and regulating social action and decision-making, as well as the need for institutional mechanisms through which the power of algorithms and algorithmic systems might themselves be regulated. It offers a unique perspective that is likely to become a significant reference point for the ever-growing debates about the power of algorithms in daily life in the worlds of research, policy and practice. The range of contributors are drawn from a broad range of disciplinary perspectives including law, public administration, applied philosophy, data science and artificial intelligence. Taken together, they highlight the rise of algorithmic power, the potential benefits and risks associated with this power, the way in which Sheila Jasanoff's long-standing claim that 'technology is politics' has been thrown into sharp relief by the speed and scale at which algorithmic systems are proliferating, and the urgent need for wider public debate and engagement of their underlying values and value trade-offs, the way in which they affect individual and collective decision-making and action, and effective and legitimate mechanisms by and through which algorithmic power is held to account.

We live in an algorithmic society. Algorithms have become the main mediator through which power is enacted in our society. This book brings together three academic fields – Public Administration, Criminal Justice and Urban Governance – into a single conceptual framework, and offers a broad cultural-political analysis, addressing critical and ethical issues of algorithms. Governments are increasingly turning towards algorithms to predict criminality, deliver public services, allocate resources, and calculate recidivism rates. Mind-boggling amounts of data regarding our daily actions are analysed to make decisions that manage, control, and nudge our behaviour in everyday life. The contributions in this book offer a broad analysis of the mechanisms and social implications of algorithmic governance. Reporting from the cutting edge of scientific research, the result is illuminating and useful for understanding the relations between algorithms and power.Topics covered include: Algorithmic governmentality Transparency and accountability Fairness in criminal justice and predictive policing Principles of good digital administration Artificial Intelligence (AI) in the smart city This book is essential reading for students and scholars of Sociology, Criminology, Public Administration, Political Sciences, and Cultural Theory interested in the integration of algorithms into the governance of society.

Investigating the impact of digital technology on contemporary constitutionalism, this book offers an overview of the transformations that are currently occurring at constitutional level, highlighting their link with ongoing societal changes. It reconstructs the multiple ways in which constitutional law is reacting to these challenges and explores the role of one original response to this phenomenon: the emergence of Internet bills of rights. Over the past few years, a significant number of Internet bills of rights have emerged around the world. These documents represent non-legally binding declarations promoted mostly by individuals and civil society groups that articulate rights and principles for the digital society. This book argues that these initiatives reflect a change in the constitutional ecosystem. The transformations prompted by the digital revolution in our society ferment under a vault of constitutional norms shaped for ‘analogue’ communities. Constitutional law struggles to address all the challenges of the digital environment. In this context, Internet bills of rights, by emerging outside traditional institutional processes, represent a unique response to suggest new constitutional solutions for the digital age. Explaining how constitutional law is reacting to the advent of the digital revolution and analysing the constitutional function of Internet Bills of Rights in this context, this book offers a global comparative investigation of the latest transformations that digital technology is generating in the constitutional ecosystem and highlights the plural and multilevel process that is contributing to shape constitutional norms for the Internet age.

This edited collection seeks to map the landscape of contemporary informational interests, to evaluate a range of recognised and putative rights and wrongs associated with modern information societies, and to consider how law, regulation, and governance should be deployed in response. New technologies and new applications constantly disrupt our values, our framing of our world, and our sense of where we are and who we are. In our ‘information societies’, we entertain mixed hopes and expectations, as well as significant fears and concerns. At the root of these, there are a number of informational interests, on the basis of which certain rights are claimed and particular wrongs denounced. This book addresses these interests, considering them as relating primarily to the integrity of the informational ecosystem, to the accessibility, accuracy, and authenticity of public information, and to our individual ability to control the outward and inward flows of information that relates directly to ourselves. Covering a wide range of subjects, the book’s interrogation of our contemporary information society is oriented around two questions: first, whether the information society in which we live is the kind of society that we think it should be and, second, if not, what we can reasonably expect law, regulation, and governance to do in providing the basis for improving it. This book will be of considerable interest to those working at the intersection of law and technology, as well as others concerned with the legal, political, and social aspects of our information society.

Exploring issues from big-data to robotics, this volume is the first to comprehensively examine the regulatory implications of AI technology.

A laboratory study that investigates how algorithms come into existence. Algorithms--often associated with the terms big data, machine learning, or artificial intelligence--underlie the technologies we use every day, and disputes over the consequences, actual or potential, of new algorithms arise regularly. In this book, Florian Jaton offers a new way to study computerized methods, providing an account of where algorithms come from and how they are constituted, investigating the practical activities by which algorithms are progressively assembled rather than what they may suggest or require once they are assembled.

How does automation affect us, our environment, and our imaginations? What actions should we take in response to automation? Beyond grand narratives and technology-driven visions of the future, what more can automation offer? With these questions in mind, The De Gruyter Handbook of Automated Futures provides a framework for thinking about and implementing automation differently. It consolidates automated futures as an inter- and transdisciplinary research field, embedding the imaginaries, interactions, and impacts of automation technology within their social, historical, societal, cultural, and political contexts. Promoting a critical yet constructive and engaging agenda, the handbook invites readers to collaborate with rather than resist automation agendas. It does so by pushing the agenda for social science, humanities and design beyond merely assessing and evaluating existing technologies. Instead, the handbook demonstrates how the humanities and social sciences are essential to the design and governance of sustainable sociotechnical systems. Methodologically, the handbook is underpinned by a pedagogical approach to staging co-learning and co-creation of automated futures with, rather than simply for, people. In this way, the handbook encourages readers to explore new and alternative modes of research, fostering a deeper engagement with the evolving landscape of automation.

The non-coherence theory of digital human rights has wide academic and practical implications for conceptualization of the digital sphere.