A Right to Reasonable Inferences

Sandra Wachter, Lawyer and Research Fellow (Asst. Prof.), University of OxfordA Right to Reasonable Inferences: Re-thinking Data Protection Law in the Age of Big Data and AI, Columbia Business Law Review, forthcoming (2019) https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=3248829Big Data analytics and artificial intelligence (AI) draw non-intuitive and unverifiable inferences and predictions about the behaviours, preferences, and private lives of individuals..These technologies draw privacy invasive and non-verifiable inferences about us that we cannot predict, understand, or refute.Data protection law is meant to protect people’s privacy, identity, reputation, and autonomy, but is currently failing to protect data subjects from the novel risks of inferential analytics.Ironically, inferences are effectively ‘economy class’ personal data.They receive the least protection of all the types of data addressed in data protection law, and yet now pose perhaps the greatest risks in terms of privacy and discrimination.. More details

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