Nineteenth International Conference on Technology, Knowledge, and Society

Abstract

This study argues that the proliferation of Artificially Intelligence (AI) combined with the increasing dominance of corporations calls for enhanced reliance on political “discourse theory” to reshape basic principles of corporate governance. Existing corporate governance law seems utterly ill-equipped to fend off the growing spate of corporate scandals that reveal the gnawing pathology of corporate organization. A systematic privileging of the personal predilections of corporate boards and their appointed executives reveals a cancerous apathy to shareholder interests, stakeholder concerns, and the common good of the communities that corporations inhabit. A fiduciary structure that permits blind pursuit of wealth maximization while ignoring shareholder interests threatens the legitimacy of our democratic society as some of the most important decisions governing our daily lives get made behind closed doors of corporate boardrooms. By continuing to harness AI technologies without appropriate discourse-based fiduciary safeguards, corporate managers could irreversibly surrender human agency and political sovereignty to corporations in all aspects of social, political, and economic life. Without a fiduciary framework that promotes just discourse among the corporation and its various affected constituencies, the power of AI technology could cause corporations to capitulate our collective humanity for a price we never even get to negotiate. To stave such a cataclysmic surrender of human providence over our collective lives, corporate law doctrine must secure a robust sense of legitimacy in corporate decision-making processes. A corporate fiduciary framework based on political “discourse theory” could forge a path forward that allows AI to enhance rather than threaten our humanity.