‎Brazil News

 

 

Indra Spiecker, also director of the university's data protection center and editor of magazines in the field, illustrated the matter from two aspects. The first: artificial intelligence is not new, “don’t believe it.” It dates back to at least the 1960s. It certainly gained strength in the 1980s, she said, with generative AI technology and mass reach, is another step in this story.

 

Second, artificial intelligence is an invitation to the average and the past. The available data is collected and probability and correlation are applied. It means that if 80% of people think one way, that's what the AI will do. But, if one only sees the past and imagines a future based on past parameters, there will be no “development, change, alteration”, only a continuation.

 

 

“Of course we don't want to live in the 18th century. We wouldn't have ended slavery if we had just used an AI to tell us what to do and the AI had learned that slavery was a bad thing. We would never have overcome discrimination against women”, concluded him, at the International Seminar: Democracy and Fundamental Rights in the Digital Era, which is broadcast on JOTA and will continue this Friday (10/10).

 

The professor also criticized the business model of large digital platforms. She stated that the scandalization, present in the platform model, goes in the opposite direction of the “business model” of democracy, more linked to the idea of concession. She advocated in favor of democratic institutions and a more authentic, neutral and responsible internet.

 

The lecture matched that of the president of the Federal Supreme Court (STF), minister Luís Roberto Barroso. He said that liberal democracy was the winning ideology of the last century because it simply defeated every alternative that presented itself. But at the beginning of this year, we went through a “democratic recession”.

 

Barroso explained that authoritarian populism — seen in Poland, Hungary, Nicaragua, the Philippines — tends to divide society into us and them and adopt an anti-pluralist stance. And the strategy used by authoritarian leaders in many countries involved the use of social networks.

 

But not only. Digital platforms were responsible for what the minister called the “tribalization of life”, that is, people find their groups on social networks and become accustomed to receiving only content from them that interests them and reinforces their opinion. Not to mention the press crisis and the spread of the phenomenon of disinformation.

 

“We need to make lying wrong again”, highlighted the minister. “Go back to the time when people disagreed and could sit at the same table.”

 

 

Regulation

The debaters of the subsequent panel, “Regulation of networks and platforms: the Brazilian legislative debate”, focused on holding companies responsible for possible violations committed both by themselves and by users.

 

Federal deputy Orlando Silva, rapporteur of Bill 2630/2020, to establish the Brazilian Law on Freedom, Responsibility and Transparency on the Internet, defended the improvement of the Marco Civil da Internet (Law 12,965/2014), especially in relation to article 19 , which imposes conditions for the civil liability of platforms.

 

“It is inescapable that we take steps forward on article 19. I do not see unconstitutionality in article 19, but I can see insufficiencies in the provisions of the Marco Civil da Internet with regard to responsibility. This is what interests me in discussing the liability regime of these companies – whether it is joint or subsidiary. What I think is that we need to establish a new liability regime when damage is caused to users”.

 

Silva stated that content moderation is a “duty” of networks and platforms, but, for effective rules to exist, it is necessary, first of all, to think about mechanisms to protect the fundamental right to freedom of expression.

 

“One of the main fundamental rights that we need to exercise when using digital services concerns freedom of expression, an extraordinary right fundamental to democracy.