‘Agency’ and the future of digital public spaces

• Department of Law

The Digital Public Sphere Working Group is pleased to present the research of Emma Semaan, DPhil Candidate at the University of Oxford.

The rise of AI 'Agents' — systems designed to autonomously perform tasks on users’ behalf — has significant implications for personal autonomy and democratic function. These systems require deep access to personal information (data) and make decisions based on learned user preferences, effectively acting ‘autonomously’— and potentially shaping users and their preferences in turn.

The dynamics of digital public discourse are already fraught with questions surrounding how discourse unfolds and the ways in which users are shaped by the systems they interface with. With the overwhelming degree of algorithmic curation on users’ behalf, what might be the consequences for collective agency and deliberative democracy in our digital public spaces? 

About the speaker:

Emma Semaan is a DPhil candidate at the Faculty of Law and a member of Exeter College. Her research primarily focuses on the regulation of technology and digital platforms from a holistic and comparative perspective. She is supervised by Professors Jonathan Herring and Charles Foster.

All interested fellows, PhD researchers, professors and visiting academics are invited to participate.

The Zoom link will be shared with participants upon registration.