Eduard Fosch Villaronga

Bio: Eduard Fosch Villaronga is an academic researcher from Leiden University. The author has contributed to research in topics: Privacy law & Human–robot interaction. The author has an hindex of 7, co-authored 22 publications receiving 255 citations. Previous affiliations of Eduard Fosch Villaronga include Autonomous University of Barcelona & University of Twente.

Transparency you can trust: Transparency requirements for artificial intelligence between legal norms and contextual concerns:

Abstract: Transparency is now a fundamental principle for data processing under the General Data Protection Regulation. We explore what this requirement entails for artificial intelligence and automated decision-making systems. We address the topic of transparency in artificial intelligence by integrating legal, social, and ethical aspects. We first investigate the ratio legis of the transparency requirement in the General Data Protection Regulation and its ethical underpinnings, showing its focus on the provision of information and explanation. We then discuss the pitfalls with respect to this requirement by focusing on the significance of contextual and performative factors in the implementation of transparency. We show that human–computer interaction and human-robot interaction literature do not provide clear results with respect to the benefits of transparency for users of artificial intelligence technologies due to the impact of a wide range of contextual factors, including performative aspects. We conclude by integrating the information- and explanation-based approach to transparency with the critical contextual approach, proposing that transparency as required by the General Data Protection Regulation in itself may be insufficient to achieve the positive goals associated with transparency. Instead, we propose to understand transparency relationally, where information provision is conceptualized as communication between technology providers and users, and where assessments of trustworthiness based on contextual factors mediate the value of transparency communications. This relational concept of transparency points to future research directions for the study of transparency in artificial intelligence systems and should be taken into account in policymaking.

Humans Forget, Machines Remember: Artificial Intelligence and the Right to Be Forgotten

Abstract: To understand the Right to be Forgotten in context of artificial intelligence, it is necessary to first delve into an overview of the concepts of human and AI memory and forgetting. Our current law appears to treat human and machine memory alike – supporting a fictitious understanding of memory and forgetting that does not comport with reality. (Some authors have already highlighted the concerns on the perfect remembering.) This Article will examine the problem of AI memory and the Right to be Forgotten, using this example as a model for understanding the failures of current privacy law to reflect the realities of AI technology. First, this Article analyzes the legal background behind the Right to be Forgotten, in order to understand its potential applicability to AI, including a discussion on the antagonism between the values of privacy and transparency under current E.U. privacy law. Next, the Authors explore whether the Right to be Forgotten is practicable or beneficial in an AI/machine learning context, in order to understand whether and how the law should address the Right to Be Forgotten in a post-AI world. The Authors discuss the technical problems faced when adhering to strict interpretation of data deletion requirements under the Right to be Forgotten, ultimately concluding that it may be impossible to fulfill the legal aims of the Right to be Forgotten in artificial intelligence environments. Finally, this Article addresses the core issue at the heart of the AI and Right to be Forgotten problem: the unfortunate dearth of interdisciplinary scholarship supporting privacy law and regulation.

Innovation under pressure: Implications for data privacy during the Covid-19 pandemic

Abstract: The global Covid-19 pandemic has resulted in social and economic disruption unprecedented in the modern era. Many countries have introduced severe measures to contain the virus, including travel re...

The Lean Startup:How Today's Entrepreneurs Use Continuous Innovation to Create Radically Successful Businesses

Abstract: Eric Ries was born in September 1978. He graduated from Yale University and moved to silicon Valley in the beginning of the millennium. He pioneered the philosophy of Lean Startup, based on his experience with multiple startups, primary being IMVU which he co-founded along with Will Harvey in 2004. Eric Ries originated his Lean Startup philosophy after getting inspired from the Japanese Philosophy of Lean Manufacturing.

The walkthrough method: An approach to the study of apps

Abstract: Software applications (apps) are now prevalent in the digital media environment. They are the site of significant sociocultural and economic transformations across many domains, from health and relationships to entertainment and everyday finance. As relatively closed technical systems, apps pose new methodological challenges for sociocultural digital media research. This article describes a method, grounded in a combination of science and technology studies with cultural studies, through which researchers can perform a critical analysis of a given app. The method involves establishing an app’s environment of expected use by identifying and describing its vision, operating model and modes of governance. It then deploys a walkthrough technique to systematically and forensically step through the various stages of app registration and entry, everyday use and discontinuation of use. The walkthrough method establishes a foundational corpus of data upon which can be built a more detailed analysis of an app’s intended purpose, embedded cultural meanings and implied ideal users and uses. The walkthrough also serves as a foundation for further user-centred research that can identify how users resist these arrangements and appropriate app technology for their own purposes.

Code and Other Laws of Cyberspace

Abstract: Code and Other Laws of Cyberspace, by Lawrence Lessig, Basic Books, 1999, 230 pages. I. INTRODUCTION Just as Rachel Carson's classic Silent Spring awakened the world to environmental pollution in 1962, Larry Lessig's insightful Code and Other Laws of Cyberspace(1) (Code) seeks to warn longtime inhabitants of cyberspace of a major danger to the wild, unregulated, "1960s-like" environments to which they have grown accustomed. Code challenges the presumption of early Internet heroes, like John Perry Barlow, that technology has created an inherently free environment that can only remain so if governments leave it alone. Code observes, rather, that cyberspace is quite susceptible to alteration and that the gravest threats to online civil liberties in the United States are posed, not by laws, but by computer code--particularly those designed to commercialize the Web for e-commerce. Code explains how the business community's efforts (with government support) to make it easier to confirm cyberspace buyers' identities also unintentionally facilitate regulation of other conduct. Lessig's particular concern is with those civil liberties and other values central to American society, that the framers of the Constitution left without explicit legal protection; the limits of the technology of the time already safeguarded them. Now that the Internet and other new media have eliminated many physical and economic constraints on intrusive conduct-like the tracking of every page that an Internet suffer views--Code pleads for citizens to defend those privacy and other values they consider fundamental, lest they be diminished--if not eliminated--by code. In fact, the introduction of e-commerce-friendly Internet code is somewhat analogous to the genetic engineering of agricultural products. As Europeans--and increasingly Americans--have come to recognize, the manipulation of such basic codes may have widespread effects not limited to their targeted product markets or by national boundaries.(2) This has led many to demand public debate on the issue of what many call "Frankenfoods," and its effects on world ecosystems and human health. While Lessig certainly does not oppose e-commerce code, he advocates collective decision making where code may have major consequences with respect to important societal liberties. From an economist's perspective, Lessig understands that the "externalities" of e-commerce code--in terms of harm to social values--are too significant to expect private sector code writers to design a socially optimal architecture guided solely by Adam Smith's invisible hand. Rather, democratic principles require that, prior to the adoption of important varieties of what he terms "West Coast [computer],"(3) there be public discussions comparable to those associated with the adoption of "East Coast [legal] code."(4) Decisions about how much control over information society wants to allow and by whom, call for democratic decision making. With concerns similar to those of political activist Jeremy Rifkin,(5) Lessig implores citizens not to maintain blind faith in the social value judgments of the commercial marketplace where externalities may be given short shrift, if not ignored altogether, until irreversible harm is done. While Code focuses on issues arising from Internet technology, it also discusses the more general relationship between technology and law. Code observes that four principal forces regulate people's behavior: laws, norms, prices, and technology (although it calls the latter forces "market" and "architecture"). It explains how each of these limit individuals' actions, how the forces can work directly or indirectly in combinations, and how improvements in technology can dramatically alter the composite constraint on people's conduct. The middle third of Code is entirely devoted to identifying how technology--primarily the Internet--is significantly altering the net effect of these four forces on behaviors. …