The 2021 UNESCO Recommendation on the Ethics of Artificial Intelligence recognizes the profound and dynamic positive and negative impacts that artificial intelligence (AI) has on all aspects of life and particularly on the human mind. Most importantly, the recommendation restates the growing global awareness about the potential dangers of AI. For instance, AI is believed to pose particularly serious dangers and risks to the human mind through so-called “subliminal AI systems.” According to Article 5 (1) lit a) of the European Union’s Artificial Intelligence Act (AIA), subliminal AI systems are able to “deploy subliminal techniques beyond a person’s consciousness in order to materially distort a person’s behaviour in a manner that causes or is likely to cause that person or another person physical or psychological harm”. These systems open unprecedented possibilities of the manipulation of human thoughts and actions, which is why they are deemed to pose serious risks to the freedom of thought and other related rights.

My proposed lecture would primarily be based on my book “The EU Artificial Intelligence Act Regulating Subliminal AI Systems” published by Routledge in August 2022 as well as a number of further articles written on AI and related matters. All these writings focus on a variety of highly intra- and interdisciplinary aspects related to the governance and regulation of AI. They not only address the specific legal problems of the language of Article 5 EU AI Act, but also discusses a wider range of relevant psychological and technological issues. To mention but a few, the book casts a critical light on the notion of “subliminal AI systems” by providing a detailed analysis of the history of subliminal perception, the implication of the individual senses. It also presents examples of existing technologies that might deploy subliminal techniques in order to allow for the future proofing of the Act in light of the rapid development of future technologies.

Several additional writings have discussed the right to freedom of thought and the proposed right to cognitive liberty as well as “legal synaesthesia” – a term I coined to highlight the parallels between trends in law, language and technology, or more specifically between the problems of regulation posed by oxymora and the convergence of different technologies, such as augmented and virtual reality, AI and neurotechnologies. In another article, I have specifically addressed the future of law in relation with the changing perception of time as well as the role of prediction in future law-making. In my last article, forthcoming in May 2024, I have focused more on institutional aspects of AI governance, in which I also criticise the dominant narrative of a “global race toward the regulation of AI”, which – as I argue – should better be called a “joint effort toward the global regulation of AI”. In terms of methodology, the various writings draw or further elaborate on the arguments regarding the limitations of dualistic thinking and binary logic as outlined in my book “Law in the Time of Oxymora: A Synaesthesia of Language, Logic and Law” (Routledge 2018).