Paternalism in the governance of artificial intelligence and automated decision-making in the United Kingdom

This paper raises the question of whether recent dynamics in the governance of artificial intelligence (AI) and automated decision making (ADM) in the United Kingdom (UK) are paternalistic in nature. An initial section explains the idea of paternalism and its significance for thinking about AI (Section 1). Considering AI applications in automated decision-making (AI/ADM) and their connotations for human autonomy, we contend that AI/ADM involves a propensity for paternalism (Section 2). This suggests implications in governance, including trust-related perspectives on AI/ADM and questions of participation, which we review as background to a legal perspective on AI/ADM and a discussion of the ‘turn’ to ethics in this field (Section 3). The main analysis of the paper observes that UK AI/ADM governance over the period 2016-2020 is paternalistic and considers potential justifications (Section 4). A conclusion summarises the argument and suggests recommendations focused on future research directions, the Centre for Data Ethics and Innovation (CDEI) as a pivotal governance actor and a broad set of proposals designed to develop ‘countervailing powers’ as a contribution to the transformations occurring around AI/ADM (Section 5).