What We Should Do Before the Social Bots Take Over: Online Privacy Protection and the Political Economy of Our Near Future
Name
Graeff-SocialBotsPrivacy-MIT8.pdf
Description
What We Should Do Before the Social Bots Take Over: Online Privacy Protection and the Political Economy of Our Near Future
Size
272.13 KB
Format
Adobe PDF
Checksum (MD5)
4c588211a5f5879227794244c717c13d
Author(s)
Graeff, Erhardt
Date Issued
2013
Publisher
Presented at Media in Transition 8: Public Media, Private Media, MIT, Cambridge, May 5
Citation
Graeff, E. 2013. ‘What We Should Do Before the Social Bots Take Over: Online Privacy Protection and the Political Economy of Our Near Future.’ Presented at Media in Transition 8: Public Media, Private Media, MIT, Cambridge, May 5.
Abstract
Direct interactions between humans and bots generally conjure up images from science fiction of Terminator robots or artificial intelligence gone rogue, like 2001's HAL or The Matrix. In reality, AI is still far from much of that sophistication, yet we are already faced with the ethical and legal ramifications of bots in our everyday lives. Drones are being used for collecting military intelligence and bombing runs. U.S. states have passed laws to address self-driving cars on public roads (Marcus 2012). And nearer the subject of this paper, the legality of search engine bots (web crawlers) has been openly questioned on grounds of intellectual property protection and trespassing (Plitch 2002). Bots inspire fear because they represent the loss of control. These fears are in some ways justified, particularly on grounds of privacy invasion. Online privacy protection is already a fraught space, comprising varied and strong positions, and existing laws and regulations that are antiquated many times over by the rapid growth and innovation of the internet in recent decades. The emergence of social bots, as means of entertainment, research, and commercial activity, poses an additional complication to online privacy protection by way of information asymmetry and failures to provide
informed consent. In the U.S., the lack of an explicit right to privacy and the federal government’s predilection for laissez faire corporate regulation expose users to a risk of privacy invasion and unfair treatment when they provide personal data to websites and online services, especially those in the form of social bots. This paper argues for legislation that defines a general right to privacy for all U.S. citizens, addressing issues of both access and control of personal information and serving as the foundation for auditable industry design standards that inherently value and honor users' rights to privacy.
Subjects
social bots, chatbots, privacy, AI
MIT Department
Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Center for Civic Media
Persistent DSpace Link
