Seth Lazar

Our information and communication environment has fallen short of the ideals that networked global communication might have served. Existing recommender systems very likely contribute to this shortfall. In this paper, which draws on the normative tools of philosophy of computing, informed by empirical and technical insights from computer science, we make the moral case for an alternative approach. We argue that existing recommenders incentivise mass surveillance, concentrate power, fall prey to narrow behaviourism, and compromise user agency. Rather than just trying to avoid algorithms entirely, or to incrementally alter the current paradigm, researchers and engineers should explore an alternative approach: the use of large language models (LLMs) and LLM-based agents to source and curate content that matches users’ preferences and values, expressed in natural language. The use of Language Model Agents for recommendation poses its own challenges, including those related to candidate generation, computational efficiency, preference modelling, and prompt injection. Nonetheless, if implemented successfully, these systems could: guide us through the digital public sphere without relying on mass surveillance; shift power away from platforms towards users; optimise for what matters instead of just for behavioural proxies; and scaffold our agency instead of undermining it.

This paper examines three approaches to the relationship between our moral reasons to bear costs for others’ sake before and beyond the call of duty. Symmetry holds that you are required to optimise your beneficial sacrifices even when they are genuinely supererogatory. If you are required to bear a cost C for the sake of a benefit B, when they are the only costs and benefits at stake, you are also conditionally required to bear an additional cost C, for the sake of an additional benefit B, when enough other costs and benefits are at stake that both of your alternatives are presumptively supererogatory. Disconnection rejects the requirement to optimise when your options are presumptively supererogatory and maintains that you have an entirely free hand to choose as you will among them. Asymmetry holds that when acting beyond the call of duty you are entitled to a measure of additional freedom compared to when you are not taking on supererogatory costs—you can prioritise your own well-being and reasons to a greater degree—but places constraints on the options that you may permissibly choose. We defend a version of Asymmetry and explore its implications for recent debates on charitable giving.