(Un)friendly Algorithm: Religious Freedom and Digital Technologies

This blog series explores some threats that digital technologies can create to freedom of religion or belief and other human rights. It starts with Neville Rochow’s elaboration on the potential harmfulness of algorithm-based decision-making if the program does not take account of religious beliefs. Rochow emphasizes that the predictable and (in many ways) helpful expansion of AI’s role in everyday life must be accompanied by companies’ greater corporate accountability and obedience to the law.

Yulia Razmetaeva explains why AI technology may be non-neutral and have a significant influence on freedom of thought pointing at it as a source of fake information  that calls for violence.

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What Is and What Should Never Be: Corporate and Digital Specters that Threaten Fundamental Freedoms

Neville Rochow QC is an Australian Barrister, Associate Professor (Adjunct) at the University of Adelaide Law School, and a member of Anthony Mason Chambers in Adelaid

Corporations are notorious for their bad behavior in the pursuit of profits [1] and the need for laws to regulate them [2]. In relation to religious and other freedoms, where corporations have any influence upon their exercise, laws and regulatory regimes could work to enhance the enjoyment of rights and freedoms. But there are legal and regulatory measures that just should not be undertaken since they diminish that enjoyment. The distinctions between what can be done and what should not be done, what is and what should never be, have become all the more important as our lives are increasingly ruled by corporate powers and now their digital servants.

As to potential impact, consider the instance of what happens to religious freedom when an algorithm in the emergency room computer decides whether or not to administer a blood transfusion. If nothing in the program asks a question whether the patient is a faithful Jehovah’s Witness, the machine will decide the question without consultation on religious faith. Religious freedom is rendered irrelevant.

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Today’s Technologies’ Apparent Neutrality and Freedom of Thought, Conscience, and Religion

Yulia Razmetaeva is the Head of the Center for Law, Ethics, and Digital Technologies at Yaroslav Mudryi National Law University (Ukraine)

We used to separate social life and face-to-face communications, as well as the country’s political life from what’s going on inside our gadgets. We appear to somehow separate the “people’s world” from the digital one. The truth of the matter, however, is that technologies have become so advanced they’ve embraced every aspect of the “people’s world.” Technologies’ influence is immense.

Having spread far beyond the limits of the digital world, technologies can literally define our lives, and not only in terms of everyday habits and preferences but also concerning issues important to society as democracy, rule of law, and human rights. The Cambridge Analytica case showed how dangerous it is to underestimate the impact of profiling and artificial contradictions in social media on elections. New technologies contribute to the fact that people find themselves in filter bubbles and spend more and more time with people who have similar views, rather than those who have different ones, which leads to narrow-mindedness, tunnel vision, and, therefore, intolerance.

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