AI fairness on our digital markets

Handouts from the presentation:

Topic: AI fairness on our digital markets

When: 7 May at 12.00-13.00

Where: Online

Speakers: Behrang Kianzad, Business Law, LUSEM, Lund University

Spoken language: English

Abstract

Recent years have witnessed the re-emergence of the highly contested concept of “fairness” in European competition law, economics and policy, not least regarding digital markets, Big Tech and AI. This development is not only resultant from the digital and technical advancement, the rise of globally dominant Big Tech companies and deficiencies in the competitive structure of digital and AI driven markets, but also from an institutional law and economics perspective. Insights in bounded rationality, that we at times care more about “fairness” than maximizing utility in transactions as well as a host of macro- and micro-economic research on calculable fairness in the realm of competition law and economics carry with them consequences for this area of law and economics.

Although there has been many scholarly works on the matter of fairness and artificial intelligence, most work has been done around issues such as non-discrimination, algorithmic bias and human rights aspects, but less attention has been focused on unfairness produced on societal and individual level due to the position occupied by data-driven economy and resultant inequalities and market failures.

Having organised a European conference with leading European scholars as well as participation by Swedish and Italian competition authorities in February 2025 at Lund University, with support from AI Lund among other stakeholders, a European researcher network on Fairness in Digital Markets and Artificial Intelligence (FIDMA) has been created, open to all researchers who want to contribute to this field.

The lunch seminar will feature a presentation on the matter of fairness in digital markets and artificial intelligence by one of the founders of FIDMA, Dr. Behrang Kianzad (Departement of Business Law, School of Economics and Management, Lund University), and interested parties are invited to the following kick-off event for the network, which occurs after the lunch seminar.

The seminar presents a recent article by Dr. Behrang Kianzad, which explores the implication of fairness as a regulatory and competition law concept applied to digital and Artificial Intelligence markets, in light of recent law and policy developments targeting the interaction between data, market power and competition law. The article is to be published by Journal of Law, Market and Innovation in April 2025, but the pre-print can be found here on SSRN: https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=5030204