Digital Domination: A Case for Republican Liberty in Artificial Intelligence

TL;DR

The paper argues that AI-driven algorithms threaten republican liberty by enabling domination through unaccountable power in both private technology platforms and political processes. It articulates republican liberty, differentiates it from Berlin's negative/positive liberty, and applies it to digital advertising and social media to diagnose two forms of domination—individual and political. The analysis shows AI already shapes behavior and beliefs without accountability and multinational platforms enable cross-border influence, arguing for accountability mechanisms and supranational governance. The work provides a principled framework for integrating AI into society that preserves freedom from domination and guides regulation and design toward antipower and transparency.

Abstract

Artificial intelligence is set to revolutionize social and political life in unpredictable ways, raising questions about the principles that ought to guide its development and regulation. By examining digital advertising and social media algorithms, this article highlights how artificial intelligence already poses a significant threat to the republican conception of liberty -- or freedom from unaccountable power -- and thereby highlights the necessity of protecting republican liberty when integrating artificial intelligence into society. At an individual level, these algorithms can subconsciously influence behavior and thought, and those subject to this influence have limited power over the algorithms they engage. At the political level, these algorithms give technology company executives and other foreign parties the power to influence domestic political processes, such as elections; the multinational nature of algorithm-based platforms and the speed with which technology companies innovate make incumbent state institutions ineffective at holding these actors accountable. At both levels, artificial intelligence has thus created a new form of unfreedom: digital domination. By drawing on the works of Quentin Skinner, Philip Pettit, and other republican theorists, this article asserts that individuals must have mechanisms to hold algorithms (and those who develop them) accountable in order to be truly free.