Abstract

In 2021, 193 Member States at UNESCO’s General Conference adopted the Recommendation on the Ethics of Artificial Intelligence as the first important step towards a future global standard-setting instrument on the subject. The text reflects an emerging consensus among the international community about the growing ethical concerns with artificial intelligence (AI). Among these concerns are also serious risks and dangers attributed to the manipulative effects of AI, which can be further exacerbated by the creative combination of AI with other innovative technologies or applications, such as brain–computer interfaces (BCIs), functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI), robotics, and big data. The risks for individuals and society as a whole caused by manipulation through AI are already well known and have recently also been addressed by the European Union having released a proposal for an Artificial Intelligence Act (AIA). Among multiple risks related to AI, the AIA singles out the specific dangers related to AI systems that deploy “subliminal techniques beyond a person’s consciousness to materially distort a person’s behaviour in a manner that causes or is likely to cause that person or another person physical or psychological harm”. The present article thus aims to highlight the known and potential dangers related to AI systems manipulating human thoughts and behaviour through subliminal and supraliminal means and methods. To this end, it advocates the joint study of law and the senses captured by the concept of legal synaesthesia to correspond to the need for an interdisciplinary debate covering the complexity of the links between AI, related technologies, human perception based on the senses and the mind, as well as the role and instruments of law in the future organization of societies in this world.