Rights Risks of Using Affective Computing Technology in Public Governance and Their Regulation

LI Tangjie

Abstract: As the frontier of intelligent computing technology, affective computing has been used in border inspection, case investigation, crime assessment, public opinion management, traffic management and other scenarios of public governance. However, there are still public risks associated with its failure to meet the basic requirements of modern public governance, and these risks are rooted in its technical characteristics. The technical characteristics of turning emotions into signals can give rise to such problems as degrading the right to informed consent, de-governance, and undermining human dignity when applied in public governance, and consequently can lead to social rights anxiety. Additionally, the affective modeling characteristics of affective computing tend to incur the rights risks of insufficient algorithm accuracy, algorithmic discrimination, and algorithmic black boxes. To avoid these risks, it is necessary to adopt the dynamic consent model as the premise for applying affective computing in public governance, and to regulate the auxiliary application of affective computing in public governance in a hierarchical manner, to achieve a balance between the application of affective computing technology and the protection of citizens’ rights and the maintenance of public ethics.

Keywords: public governance · affective computing · rights risks · risk regulation