Humanists warn EU of AI monopolies, urge public ownership and human control

An AI ethicist representing Humanists International has warned the EU Commission of the economic and epistemic dependency resulting from foreign tech monopolies’ ownership of AI infrastructure and data. As a response, she has urged the creation of a public AI trust and strengthening the right to human review of AI decisions.

The intervention was delivered by Dr. Dorothea Winter, Research Associate in Applied Ethics at the Humanist University Berlin, on 8 June at the European Commission’s Article 17 dialogue seminar on “The ethical and social impact of artificial intelligence” after being nominated as a representative by Humanists International.

Speaking during a session on current social and ethical challenges, Dr. Winter cautioned that, without strong humanist anchors, Europe risks sliding into an economic order where a small number of foreign corporations hold the power to shape what counts as knowledge while extracting commercial rent from European data. Under this dynamic she termed “AI neocolonialism” European citizens are being treated as transparent consumers and raw material for AI development rather than as reasoning subjects of free judgment.

In that context, she outlined key tenets of the digital humanism framework. First, AI should be seen as a tool where specific systems produce specific effects and risks, rather than falling into the trap of grand narratives. Secondly, AI must be viewed as a system of selection that opaquely decides which narratives to amplify and which to suppress, shaped by its data, its engineers, and commercial interests. Finally, as AI diffuses responsibility for decisions taken, digital humanism insists that there must be a human accountable for every consequential decision an AI system takes.

Dr. Dorothea Winter, Humanist University Berlin

Dr. Winter criticized proposed EU legislation in that regard:

Where the AI Act and the GDPR treat the human being as the subject of judgement, the Omnibus treats the human being as raw material for AI development. The right to a named, accountable decision-maker is the constitutive feature of democratic governance under conditions of automation, and no simplification package should erase it.

To counter the ongoing concentration of power in the AI sphere, she presented three concrete demands for European policymakers:

1. The right to human review: Every European citizen must have the right to a human review of any consequential automated decision made by public authorities or private companies. In this context, she criticized the Digital Omnibus bill which may weaken existing protections against automated decision-making.
2. Worker co-determination: Workers must be actively consulted before AI systems that change the conditions of work through automated scheduling, evaluation or surveillance are implemented.
3. A European Public AI Trust: Modeled after CERN and the European public broadcasting tradition, a public trust should govern the compute infrastructure and training data funded by public investment.

The dialogue seminar featured opening remarks by Commissioner Magnus Brunner and Lucilla Sioli, Director of the EU AI Office, and featured senior EU officials and experts nominated by religious and non-confessional organizations to discuss the long-term societal challenges posed by AI. The Article 17 dialogue forms part of the European Commission’s formal engagement with religious and non-confessional organizations under Article 17 of the Treaty on the Functioning of the European Union.

Portrait photo: © Konstantin Börner