Algorithmic Harm

Will algorithms help people or hurt them? What about artificial intelligence in general? If consumers know what they need to know and do not suffer from behavioral biases, algorithms and AI are likely to be helpful. Consumers will be more likely to get what they want and need. But if consumers lack information, algorithms in particular will be able to convince them to make harmful or foolish choices. And if consumers suffer from behavioral biases, such as unrealistic optimism or a focus on the short term, algorithms will be able to produce serious harms. In Algorithmic Harm: Protecting People in the Age of Artificial Intelligence, Oren Bar-Gill and Cass Sunstein consider the harms and benefits of AI and algorithms and catalog the different ways in which algorithms are being or may be used in consumer and other markets. The authors identify the market conditions under which these uses injure consumers and consider policy and regulatory responses that could reduce the risks consumers, investors, workers, and voters face now—and in the future. Democracy and self-government are at risk; there is a great deal that can be done to reduce that risk.

Oren Bar-Gill is currently William J. Friedman and Alicia Townsend Friedman Professor of Law and Economics, Harvard Law School. His scholarship focuses on the law and economics of contracts and contracting. Bar-Gill joined Harvard Law School in July 2014 from New York University School of Law, where he was the Evelyn and Harold Meltzer Professor of Law and Economics. He holds a B.A. (economics), LL.B., M.A. (law & economics) and Ph.D. (economics) from Tel-Aviv University, as well as an LL.M. and S.J.D. from Harvard Law School. Bar-Gill is the recipient of the American Law Institute's Young Scholars Medal (in 2011), and of the American Law and Economics Review's Best Paper Prize (2017). He served (together with Omri Ben-Shahar and Florencia Marotta-Wurgler) as Reporter for the Restatement of the Law, Consumer Contracts. Bar-Gill also served as Editor-in-Chief of the Journal of Legal Analysis Cass R. Sunstein is currently the Robert Walmsley University Professor at Harvard University. He is the founder and director of the Program on Behavioral Economics and Public Policy at Harvard Law School. In 2018, he received the Holberg Prize from the government of Norway, sometimes described as the equivalent of the Nobel Prize for law and the humanities. In 2020, the World Health Organization appointed him as Chair of its technical advisory group on Behavioural Insights and Sciences for Health. From 2009 to 2012, he was Administrator of the White House Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs, and after that, he served on the President's Review Board on Intelligence and Communications Technologies and on the Pentagon's Defense Innovation Board. He has testified before congressional committees on many subjects, and he has advised officials at the United Nations, the European Commission, the World Bank, and many nations on issues of law and public policy. He serves as an adviser to the Behavioural Insights Team in the United Kingdom.