Gambling products and other addictive commodities are increasingly sold and marketed online. All online activities generate vast amounts of behavioural data. Gambling companies and networks leverage such data to develop new ways to sell and market products harmful to consumers.
Virve Marionneau’s project is seeking to investigate digital gambling company networks, analyse how these networks use online-generated data for commercial purposes, and illuminate the economic power structures contributing to addiction in online environments.
Addiction takes a serious toll on individuals, families, and societies. To prevent addiction, it is important to address the structures promoting addiction rather than focus only on individuals. The project will highlight how the characteristics of the online environment and the power structures of data ownership may contribute to addiction and how these can be tackled through regulation.
“The commercial use of consumer data may cause significant harm to individuals and public health", says Virve Marionneau.
The project Data-driven market power in the production of addiction (DATA-ADDICT) will be implemented between 2025 and 2030.
Marionneau has previously concentrated on social scientific addiction research and investigated the regulation, disadvantages, and economic and political determinants of gambling.
Centre for Research on Addiction, Control, and Governance (CEACG) -researchgroup:
https://www.helsinki.fi/en/researchgroups/addiction-control-and-governance
Criminal law for the time of robots
Kamil Mamak’s ERC-funded project builds a philosophical ground for criminal law that accommodates robots and thus prepares ground for the smooth cooperation of humans with robots.
Despite their (generally) benign objectives, robots may promote harmful outcomes that are under the radar of criminal law. The main aim of the project is to build a philosophical ground for criminal law that accommodates robots. The Project should ask the question, “How can the philosophical foundations of criminal law be reconstructed to accommodate robots?” instead of " How can robots be accommodated into criminal law?” which is the usual formulation way of responding to harms related to robots.
The project Philosophical Foundations of Criminal Law in the Age of Robots has three main goals: Firstly answer the question of what robots, from the perspective of criminal law, are, secondly introduce and defend the phenomenological account of criminal law, and thirdly develop models of criminal law institutions for robots.
The project aims to have societal consequences by preparing the ground for the smooth cooperation of humans with robots.
"We need to rethink the basis of criminal law to accommodate robots," says Kamil Mamak.
The project´s duration is 2024-2028.
Kamil’s current research focuses on the ethical and legal issues concerning social robots. He is especially interested in robots' moral and legal status, robot rights, responsibility gap, laws of robots and human-robot interactions. He has authored five book monographs, including “Robotics, AI and Criminal Law: Crimes against Robots,” published by Routledge in 2023. His newest book “Ethics in Human-like Robots” will be published by Routledge in 2024.
Page of the RADAR research group: https://www.helsinki.fi/en/researchgroups/robophilosophy-ai-ethics-and-datafication