[Special Feature: AI Society and Public Space] Two Implications of "Publicness"

For example, consider the claim that a city square is a public space and must be open to everyone. Some may recall how, in Western cities, such spaces are often provided facing churches or city halls, used by various people as Sunday markets, stages for street performances, or occasionally as places for political appeals. A square is a place that can be used freely in that way, and because of that, everyone can enjoy various conveniences. Now, does that "freedom" include the freedom to drive stakes, wrap ropes around an area, and claim it as one's own to occupy?

Everyone would likely answer no. Being open to all means that the possibility of access must be guaranteed (at least potentially) for everyone, and it is not permissible for any one person to restrict the freedom of others by dominating the space. The freedom guaranteed here is freedom only insofar as it does not infringe upon the similar freedom of others; that is how it would be understood.

A space with a public character thus means, on one hand, that a guarantee is given to me that I can use it at any time, but on the other hand, all others are also guaranteed the same usability, and I must tolerate the use by others (and thus the fact that I am excluded from and cannot simultaneously use the space that others are currently using). The idea of equality behind publicness—the principle that everyone is one person and no more than one person, and cannot stand in a superior position to others—brings about this duality of freedom and tolerance.

The problem then lies in whether the fact that I must tolerate use by others, as just stated, includes the fact that I myself am seen by others and exposed to their gaze. In Japan, for example, it is considered that on public roads and similar public spaces, there is an inevitable possibility of being seen by someone else, and generally, "being seen" itself must be tolerated. For this reason, it was judged lawful for the police to film a suspect on public roads and inside pachinko parlors to determine identity with a person caught on security cameras (Supreme Court Decision, April 15, 2008). Even in a case where a violation of privacy was claimed because laundry hanging on a balcony was captured when Google Street View photographed scenery from a public road (Fukuoka High Court Judgment, July 13, 2012), illegality was ultimately denied on the grounds that it fell within a certain limit of tolerance.

In contrast, the attitude of EU countries is generally said to differ greatly from this. For example, Swiss privacy authorities once expressed the view that it is impermissible for dashcams to film the surroundings from inside a car, as it is impossible to obtain prior consent from all individuals who might be captured. In countries like France, warnings have also been issued that even when installing a security camera at one's front door, it is illegal to set it to film the sidewalk in front beyond the property line. Behind this is the philosophy that since a road is precisely a public space and must be open to all, it is also impermissible to exclude people who, for whatever reason, do not want to be filmed or seen.

Some might doubt whether there is such a thing as a legitimate reason for not wanting to be seen by others. For example, if someone is hurrying down a street right now to commit a crime, they would want to avoid public notice, but we would rather say that it is legitimate to monitor them against their will. However, is it inappropriate for an actor, who is so popular that they are constantly surrounded by fans if noticed, to want to spend a rare day off quietly? It is also a reality that people with significant scars or abnormalities in their appearance, such as on their face, are looked at with curiosity by those around them (or worry that they will be). Even for those who still argue that for actors it is a "fame tax" or an unavoidable part of a career they chose themselves, it is surely impossible to deny the existence of people who "do not want to be seen" for reasons where self-responsibility cannot be questioned, as in the latter case.

In other words, we can consider that a conflict between the two implications of publicness pointed out earlier is occurring here. When the desire for me to walk freely in a public space contradicts the fact that others who can enjoy that freedom just as I do exist in that space and I am seen by those others, which one should we prioritize and for what reason?

Consider, for example, the question of whether a person walking in a square is seen by others, or whether a conversation on a public phone is heard by those around. Of course, with a public phone, a Western-style response of physically blocking sound by placing it in a box and dividing the space is possible. However, it would be simply impossible to divide a square into countless paths where gazes do not pass each other to protect the freedom of movement of those who do not want to be seen, or even if it were possible, it would result in creating something that can no longer be called a square.

To begin with, the human eyes and ears at issue are things that cannot be closed on one hand—things that automatically see and hear unless very strong coercion is applied—and it must be said that the possibility of success is low even if one attempts a physically complete response to them. On the other hand, they were imperfect existences where even if something should physically be heard, it is unknown whether they are actually listening (paying attention and recognizing it), or whether they will remember it even if they heard it. Perhaps that is why a Japanese-style solution, emphasized in comparative culture studies, was established: handling the situation through manners, such as "pretending not to hear" the contents of a call that should be audible from a phone placed in an open space.

Considering that behavioral patterns like "turning a blind eye" to each other in places where it might be slightly awkward to be seen entering or leaving have likely developed regardless of East or West, one could think that even in the West, people have trusted this human nature somewhere. By trusting in human imperfection and social customs, public space was positioned as a place open to everyone where one is not seen or heard, and conflicts regarding publicness were avoided.

However, in recent years, the "machine eye" newly born from the development of information technology is different; it possesses the perfection of recording various things exactly as set and remembering them unless deleted. With the generalization of surveillance using electronic technology and the emergence of a situation where the information collected there is automatically and rapidly analyzed by AI, it can be said that the question of to whom and to what extent public space should be open has become something that must be seriously considered.

And this point will be questioned more seriously in the internet, which has become an important part of our daily lives as a route for information to travel, even more than in the electronic surveillance deployed on the streets where we actually come and go. On one hand, we naturally have the sense—regardless of whether we call it information privacy or the right to control one's own information—that information such as what books I bought at an online bookstore, who I talked to on SNS, and which pages of which sites I viewed is "mine," and we do not want it to be known or used by someone else without permission.

However, in these actions, there is always a counterparty; the bookstore, the conversation partner, and the site creator inevitably receive that information and, in certain cases, are expected to react appropriately based on it (an online bookstore that doesn't recognize an order and thus doesn't send a book would have no reason to exist). In the case of SNS, that conversation might be placed in a state where it can be seen by other users of the same service, and even in an online bookstore, my actions might be influencing someone somewhere else, albeit in an indirect form like the creation of a "recommendations" list ("Customers who bought this book also bought..."). In this sense, the internet is a public space where various information from various people travels, and just like physical space, the relationship between freedom and tolerance in that place should become an issue.

For example, the reason the "recommendations" function mentioned just now can continue to be useful for us is likely because many other users are seriously choosing products and buying what they truly need. As actually became a problem for a time on Amazon.com, if people are allowed to freely write comments and ratings regardless of whether they purchased the book, it leads to a flood of criticism against the author's personality or actions rather than the book's content, or conversely, a line of meaningless and uniform praise from entities that seem to be paid advertisers. It is easy to understand how such "unreliable evaluations" greatly damage the convenience of a service and the value of ratings if one recalls general-participation gourmet sites. Fake news, which is often discussed recently, can also be thought of as a problem created by such treacherous users of the internet. If we do not exclude the treacherous behavior at issue here and behave ourselves so as not to restrict the appropriate enjoyment of the service by others, the freedom of the public space we ourselves enjoy will likely perish.

And it can be said that what is necessary for that is the possibility of tracking and evaluation. For example, even in ancient societies where the state and laws as we know them did not exist, economic activities must have been carried out to some extent. Even in situations where one cannot be forced by a court to keep a contract, people make promises to each other and can maintain economic relationships such as buying, selling, and leasing by voluntarily keeping them. Trust and evaluation are what people called libertarians, who take a negative stance toward the state in general, have cited as important factors. A person who does not keep a promise they made will be evaluated by those around them as someone who might do the same thing next time, and they will no longer be able to have new promises made with them. A rational person who can understand that this leads to their own disadvantage should try to avoid actions that lower their evaluation from those around them and cause them to lose trust as much as possible. In this way, people try to keep promises autonomously and voluntarily, and we can also make promises trusting that others will do so.

But as is immediately apparent, for this process to function, it is necessary for who is making the promise and what the result was to be understood from the perspective of the people around them, and for the resulting evaluation to be accumulated. In an ancient communal village, those conditions might have been met, and it might have been possible within a very limited social group like the great merchants engaged in medieval Mediterranean trade. However, on many SNS, one can create countless accounts that do not necessarily correspond to the real me—an online "me"—and if some misconduct is discovered, one can likely discard it and be reborn as a new "me." In a situation where the "me" as the subject of tracked behavior and accumulated evaluation is itself highly fluid, a strategy of aiming for short-term profit through treacherous behavior becomes more advantageous than building up good evaluations to win the trust of those around.

Similarly, if the party that broke a contract could freely demand that the information be deleted, the mechanism of trust would again fail to function. The certain degree of anonymity and the portability between services and accounts realized by the internet provided us with a free space liberated from real-world human relationships and the pressures arising there, creating great convenience. However, at the same time, by making the accumulation of evaluation difficult, it also caused the loss of the possibility for a spontaneous order to develop and be maintained.

Under these circumstances, however, if we intend to maintain the convenience brought by the free distribution and use of information through the internet, we will face the following choice. If we want to avoid the order of information being disrupted by the existence of treacherous users, individual users—that is, each and every one of us using the internet—must avoid such acts and appropriately transmit and allow the use of information so as not to restrict the convenience of others (at least intentionally). If appealing to the awareness of individual users does not sufficiently deter problematic behavior, the possibility of tracking and evaluation must be guaranteed by some systemic response. As introduced earlier, the system of allowing only users who actually purchased a product to post reviews and ratings can be understood as an example of this. Conversely, it should also mean that the idea of treating all information concerning an individual as if it were their exclusive property and allowing free control based on their will should be suppressed.

Let me repeat the conclusion. In order for a public space to bring its convenience to everyone as an "open place" without losing its publicness, the restriction that exclusive occupation by a specific person must be excluded is indispensable. To make it possible for personal information accumulated and distributed in today's information society, centered on the internet, to generate benefits for everyone, treacherous users who try to monopolize profits for themselves by distorting information should be excluded, and a certain gaze of suspicion might also need to be directed toward attitudes such as enjoying the convenience generated by information provided by others while refusing to give "one's own information."

Publicness inherently includes the premise of not restricting others and the limit of having to tolerate others enjoying the same freedom. If we are to enjoy the benefits of AI technology while preventing its harms, we will need to find an appropriate balance between freedom and tolerance and seriously consider institutional mechanisms that can maintain it.