Abstract

Artificial Intelligence (AI) enables the production of novel and salient groupings of individuals that are both central to information capitalism and an existential challenge to the framework of American equality law. Using diverse techniques and widely sourced data, AI is used to assemble people into novel, presumably coherent groups. Membership in these groups, in turn, determines individuals’ differential exposure to hate, bias, and discrimination on a systematic scale. Processes of targeted advertising, healthcare service allocation, access to financial credit, and so-called “personalized pricing” for consumer goods, are determined by membership in these AI-constructed groups. This project surveys the emerging equality law frameworks aimed at protecting AI groups from hate and structural discrimination. It explains how these emerging frameworks mistakenly narrow regulatory concern to the ways in which AI groups overlap with traditionally protected classes, thereby permitting hate and discrimination against members of AI groups that are not also identified with legally protected classes. The project critiques the assembly of AI groups as a racially discriminatory and unavoidable feature of informational capitalism, which extracts value from processes of classification, essentialization, and differential treatment. The project concludes with law and policy prescriptions to protect AI groups from hate in the digital age.

Field

Law

Extramural Partners

CADRE (Community Asset Development Redefining Education) Black and Brown Families