[RESEARCH PAPER] From Rejection to Regulation: Mapping the Landscape of AI Resistance, by Can Simsek and Ayse Gizem Yasar

From Rejection to Regulation: Mapping the Landscape of AI Resistance 

This Research Paper provides a comprehensive examination of resistance to artificial intelligence across multiple disciplines and domains. Can Simsek and Ayse Gizem Yasar conducted an extensive investigation into why people oppose AI technologies, defining resistance broadly to encompass public protests, legal challenges, critical scholarship, grassroots advocacy, and other forms of organized opposition to AI development and deployment. Through their analysis, they identified five primary drivers of this resistance: socio-economic concerns centered primarily on job displacement, ethical concerns including algorithmic bias and threats to human dignity, safety worries about AI’s potential dangers, fears about threats to democracy and sovereignty, and growing environmental concerns about AI’s ecological footprint.

The paper examines six distinct cases of resistance movements spanning creative industries, migration and border control, medical AI, higher education, defense and security sectors, and environmental activism. Each case demonstrates how one or more of the identified causes manifest in real-world opposition efforts. The research particularly highlights the crucial role of civil society organizations in organizing and coordinating citizen resistance to AI, showing how these groups serve as the primary vehicles for collective action against AI deployment in various sectors.

Perhaps most significantly, the paper documents how resistance movements have achieved concrete policy outcomes, with the European Union’s AI Act serving as a prime example where organized opposition successfully led to the formal prohibition of manipulative AI systems. This research paper fills a critical gap in AI studies by providing a cross-disciplinary analysis of resistance movements, offering valuable insights for policymakers, technology companies, and civil society organizations seeking to understand the complex relationship between society and artificial intelligence development.

About the authors:

Dr. Ayşe Gizem Yaşar is an assistant professor (education) at LSE Law School and a CREATe Fellow at the University of Glasgow. Her work focuses on innovation, history of technological change, and the regulation of new technologies. 

Can Şimşek is a lawyer and policy researcher specializing in the governance of emerging technologies, with a particular focus on artificial intelligence. He is a research fellow at the Humboldt Institute for Internet Society. As a member of AI Ethics Experts Without Borders Network, he also serves as an external consultant to UNESCO.