By the early 2020s, emotional artificial intelligence will become increasingly present in everyday objects and practices such as assistants, cars, games, mobile phones, wearables, toys, marketing, insurance, policing, education and border controls. There is also keen interest in using these technologies to regulate and optimize the emotional experiences of spaces, such as workplaces, hospitals, prisons, classrooms, travel infrastructures, restaurants, retail and chain stores. Developers frequently claim that their applications do not identify people. Taking the claim at face value, this paper (...) asks, what are the privacy implications of emotional AI practices that do not identify individuals? To investigate privacy perspectives on soft non-identifying emotional AI, the paper draws upon the following: over 100 interviews with the emotion detection industry, legal community, policy-makers, regulators and NGOs interested in privacy; a workshop with stakeholders to design ethical codes for using data about emotions; a UK survey of 2068 citizens on feelings about emotion capture technologies. It finds a weak consensus among social stakeholders on the need for privacy, this driven by different interests and motivations. Given this weak consensus, it concludes that there exists a limited window of opportunity to societally agree principles of practice regarding privacy and the use of data about emotions. (shrink)

This paper argues that there are value and design-based problems in current ambitions for the Metaverse. With the Metaverse deepening longstanding commercial surveillance practices, the paper focuses on data protection harms from biometric and emotion data, the gauging of first-person perspectives, and sensitivities around profiling of avatars. The paper advances two notions to address harms and data protection: _surveillant physics_ and _virtual realist governance_. _Surveillant physics_ refers to surveillance informing the laws of how that reality operates: this is a useful (...) concept given the granular control that platforms have over virtual worlds and the laws by which they function. _Virtual realist governance_ builds on the longstanding principle of virtual realism and David Chalmer’s recent theorising of Reality+ that demands that the virtual is taken to be real, meaning that experiences of virtual objects and what occurs in-world are treated as meaningful. The paper progresses to further consider governance questions, both around technical and ethical standards, but also data protection ideas such as personal data stores, and data trusts, that were not conceived as Metaverse-based ideas, but have greater chance of being realised as basic premises of the Metaverse are being designed. Although this paper is regretfully pessimistic, finding that a root problem of current ambitions for the Metaverse is that the public good and the commons are missing, it sees virtual realist scope for modes of resistance unseen in other digital realms. (shrink)

This paper assesses leading Japanese philosophical thought since the onset of Japan’s modernity: namely, from the Meiji Restoration onwards. It argues that there are lessons of global value for AI ethics to be found from examining leading Japanese philosophers of modernity and ethics, each of whom engaged closely with Western philosophical traditions. Turning to these philosophers allows us to advance from what are broadly individualistically and Western-oriented ethical debates regarding emergent technologies that function in relation to AI, by introducing notions (...) of community, wholeness, sincerity, and heart. With reference to AI that pertains to profile, judge, learn, and interact with human emotion, this paper contends that Japan itself may internally make better use of historic indigenous ethical thought, especially as it applies to question of data and relationships with technology; but also that externally Western and global ethical discussion regarding emerging technologies will find valuable insights from Japan. The paper concludes by distilling from Japanese philosophers of modernity four ethical suggestions, or spices, in relation to emerging technological contexts for Japan’s national AI policies and international fora, such as standards development and global AI ethics policymaking. (shrink)

Drawing on interviews with people from the advertising and technology industry, legal experts and policy makers, this paper assesses the rise of emotion detection in digital out-of-home advertising, a practice that often involves facial coding of emotional expressions in public spaces. Having briefly outlined how bodies contribute to targeting processes and the optimisation of the ads themselves, it progresses to detail industrial perspectives, intentions and attitudes to data ethics. Although the paper explores possibilities of this sector, it pays careful attention (...) to existing practices that claim not to use personal data. Centrally, it argues that scholars and regulators need to pay attention to the principle of intimacy. This is developed to counter weaknesses in privacy that is typically based on identification. Having defined technologies, use cases, industrial perspectives, legal views and arguments about jurisprudence, the paper discusses this ensemble of perspectives in light of a nationwide survey about how UK citizens feel about the potential for emotion detection in out-of-home advertising. (shrink)

This paper considers what liberal philosopher Michael Sandel coins the ‘moral limits of markets’ in relation to the idea of paying people for data about their biometrics and emotions. With Sandel arguing that certain aspects of human life (such as our bodies and body parts) should be beyond monetisation and exchange, others argue that emerging technologies such as Personal Information Management Systems can enable a fairer, paid, data exchange between the individual and the organisation, even regarding highly personal data about (...) our bodies and emotions. With the field of data ethics rarely addressing questions of payment, this paper explores normative questions about data dividends. It does so by conducting a UK-wide, demographically representative online survey to quantitatively assess adults’ views on being paid for personal data about their biometrics and emotions via a Personal Information Management System, producing a data dividend, a premise which sees personal data through the prism of markets and property. The paper finds diverse attitudes based on socio-demographic characteristics, the type of personal data sold, and the type of organisation sold to. It argues that (a) Sandel’s argument regarding the moral limits of markets has value in protecting fundamental freedoms of those in society who are arguably least able to (such as the poor); but (b) that contexts of use, in particular, blur moral limits regarding fundamental freedoms and markets. (shrink)

Introducing the Special Theme on Veillance and Transparency: A Critical Examination of Mutual Watching in the Post-Snowden, Big Data Era, this article presents a series of provocations and practices on veillance and transparency in the context of Big Data in a post-Snowden period. In introducing the theoretical and empirical research papers, artistic, activist and educational provocations and commentaries in this Special Theme, it highlights three central debates. Firstly, concerning theory/practice, it queries how useful theories of veillance and transparency are in (...) explaining mutual watching in the post-Snowden, Big Data era. Secondly, it presents a range of questions concerning norms, ethics, regulation, resistance and social change around veillance and transparency. Thirdly, it interrogates the upsurge in veillance and transparency discourses and practices post-Snowden, and asks whether they are adequate to the task of educating and engaging people on abstract and secretive surveillance practices, as well as on the possibilities and pitfalls of sousveillance. (shrink)

In this book, McStay draws on an array of philosophers to offer a novel approach to privacy matters. Against the backdrop and scrutiny of Arendt, Aristotle, Bentham, Brentano, Deleuze, Engels, Heidegger, Hume, Husserl, James, Kant, Latour, Locke, Marx, Mill, Plato, Rorty, Ryle, Sartre, Skinner, among others, McStay advances a wealth of new ideas and terminology, from affective breaches to zombie media.

This article examines the social acceptability and governance of emotional artificial intelligence in children’s toys and other child-oriented devices. To explore this, it conducts interviews with stakeholders with a professional interest in emotional AI, toys, children and policy to consider implications of the usage of emotional AI in children’s toys and services. It also conducts a demographically representative UK national survey to ascertain parental perspectives on networked toys that utilise data about emotions. The article highlights disquiet about the evolution of (...) generational unfairness, that encompasses injustices regarding the datafication of childhood, manipulation, parental vulnerability, synthetic personalities, child and parental media literacy, and need for improved governance. It concludes with practical recommendations for regulators and the toy industry. (shrink)