User accounts: How technological concepts permeate public law through the EU's AI Act
| Published date | 01 June 2024 |
| DOI | http://doi.org/10.1177/1023263X241248469 |
| Author | Ida Koivisto,Riikka Koulu,Stefan Larsson |
| Date | 01 June 2024 |
User accounts: How
technological concepts
permeate public law through the
EU’s AI Act
Ida Koivisto* , Riikka Koulu** ,
and Stefan Larsson***
Abstract
This article argues that through the EU’s technology regulation, technological concepts permeate
legal language. Such concepts may functionas transplants, even irritants, causing tensions and uncer-
tainties. As technology regulation is increasingly horizontal, i.e. obligating private and public actors
alike, these newfound legal concepts remain disconnected from established public law vocabulary
and the power constellations it represents and embeds. We approach this evolution of legal lan-
guage from public law perspective and concentrate on the concepts of ‘user’and ‘deployer’in
the EU’s upcoming Artificial Intelligence Act. We discuss these emerging legal concepts in relation
to the rich theorizing on the concepts in human–computer interaction research. Our analysis
demonstrates a discrepancy between legal and technology-oriented conceptualizations of the
‘user-deployer’. We draw three conclusions. First, the digital revolution is taking place in concep-
tual-linguistic practices of law, and not only when translating law into code. Second, when external
concepts are appropriated into law, they are uprooted from their established habitat, which may
result in unpredictability in future legal interpretation. Third, in public law, adopting the ‘user-
deployer’may have some additional challenges, as it introduces a new agent into the relationship
between public authority and private entities. Simultaneously, citizens seem to be mainly excluded
from the legal conceptualizing, which risks blurring traditional power constellations.
Keywords
The EU’s Artificial Intelligence Act, legal language, public law, human oversight, deployer
*
Faculty of Law, University of Helsinki, Finland
**
University of Helsinki Legal Tech Lab, University of Helsinki, Helsinki, Finland
***
Lund University, Lund, Sweden
Corresponding author:
Riikka Koulu, Faculties of Social Sciences and Law, University of Helsinki Legal Tech Lab, University of Helsinki, P. Box 4,
Helsinki, 00014, Uusimaa, Finland.
Email: riikka.koulu@helsinki.fi
Article
Maastricht Journal of European and
Comparative Law
2024, Vol. 31(3) 412–432
© The Author(s) 2024
Article reuse guidelines:
sagepub.com/journals-permissions
DOI: 10.1177/1023263X241248469
maastrichtjournal.sagepub.com
1. Introduction: New concepts, new thinking?
European states are rapidly digitalizing public administration, guided by the EU’s General Data
Protection Regulation (the GDPR) and national legislations. Digitalization takes place in many
forms and sizes, ranging from introducing organizational guidelines and practices to new legisla-
tion. Recent years have witnessed an upsurge in the EU’s horizontal technology regulation,
which strives towards a functioning digital Single Market by regulating private and public actors
alike. As horizontal technology regulation aims at capturing digitalization across societal sectors
and fields of law, it develops new vocabulary and adopts new concepts to do this. However, it
lacks an established legal meaning.
This emerging language, which we call the legal language of automation, is the object of our
attention in this article. We believe that this evolution of legal language, in which technological con-
cepts are transformed into legal concepts, provides a dimension deserving more attention to the
debates on law, technology and society. These concepts may function as transplants, even irritants,
in legal doctrine, causing tensions and uncertainties. Nevertheless, the adoption of such concepts
reveals how digitalization takes place also in conceptual-linguistic practices of law, and not only
when translating law into code.
One of the key topics in prior research on law and technology is the legitimacy gap in techno-
logical design, as digital technologies are not subject to the same democratic control mechanisms as
the use of public power.
1
Regardless of its seeming neutrality, digitalization is not just a matter of
efficiency and best practices but is inevitably ideological. As argued in science and technology
studies, technologies are ‘extensions of politics’or ‘politics by other means’.
2
This is to say that
it has been broadly acknowledged that neither law, technology nor the chosen vocabulary are
neutral, but embody ideologies, values and rationalities that may be at odds with one another.
3
Simply put, language matters. As we hope to demonstrate through our analysis of the concepts
of ‘user’and ‘deployer’in the EU’s upcoming Artificial Intelligence Act (AIA), the choice of con-
cepts is important –even more so when these concepts are introduced through horizontal regulation
and thus have limited, if any, connection to established legal concepts in different legal fields. To
draw out these frictions and to make our claim, we approach these conceptual changes by bringing
together various strands of research. Our approach is socio-legal, and public law provides context
for our analysis. In addition, we hope to contribute more broadly to socio-legal debates on digital-
ization of law and boundaries of technology regulation.
By drawing from public law theory and research on law and technology, we discuss how digital
technologies –and their horizontal regulation challenges –affect the existing public law vocabulary
and its core assumptions, such as the asymmetric power relations between the state and citizens. In
addition to socio-legal studies, we consider it necessary to discuss the concept of ‘user’also in rela-
tion to human–computer interaction (HCI) research. The goal is to reveal the differences between
technology-oriented and legal interpretations of the concept. As we hope to steer clear of epistemic
1. E.g. L. Lessig, Code and Other Laws of Cyberspace (Basic Books, 1999); M. Hildebrandt, Smart Technologies and the
End(s) of Law (Edward Elgar, 2015); M. Hildebrandt, ‘Legal Protection by Design: Objections and Refutations’,5
Legisprudence (2011); L. Diver, Digisprudence: Code as Law Rebooted (Edinburgh University Press, 2022).
2. B. Latour, Science in Action (Harvard University Press, 1988); L. Winner, ‘Do Artifacts Have Politics?’, 109 Daedalus
(1980); S. Slota and G. Bowker, ‘How Infrastructures Matter’, in U. Felt, R. Fouché, C. Miller and L. Smith-Doerr (eds.),
The Handbook of Science and Technology Studies (4th edition, The MIT Press, 2016).
3. R. Koulu, ‘Crafting Digital Transparency: Implementing Legal Values into Algorithmic Design’,8Transparency in the
Digital Environment (2021).
Koivisto et al. 413
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