Title: Can artificial intelligence replace whistle-blowers in the business sector?

Authors: Kafteranis Dimitrios

Addresses: Faculty of Law, University of Luxembourg, Luxembourg National Research Fund (FNR) – 10965388, Soutenu par le Fonds National de la Recherche, 10965388 (FNR), Luxembourg

Abstract: The major technological developments have changed the traditional way of doing business. These developments have facilitated whistle-blowing. Access to data is easier and faster and communicating with the public can be done in seconds. Another development is the artificial intelligence (AI) which enters the business workplace in different forms challenging the traditional working relations. The combination of these concepts gives the idea of artificial whistle-blowing or robot whistle-blowing. The concept is that a machine should conceive and report relevant wrongdoing avoiding the traditional model of whistle-blowing where the employee is the person who should report. This concept, yet unexplored, presents interesting positive and negative aspects. The purpose of this contribution is to present the idea of artificial whistle-blowing and its advantages and disadvantages for the business sector. As a conclusion, this paper suggests that the concept of artificial whistle-blowing needs still to be researched and an optimal solution, for the time being, is to permit artificial whistle-blowing as a helping tool for the employees to detect wrongdoings but report them themselves.

Keywords: whistle-blowing; artificial intelligence; compliance; business sector.

DOI: 10.1504/IJTPL.2019.104948

International Journal of Technology Policy and Law, 2019 Vol.3 No.2, pp.160 - 171

Received: 29 Mar 2019
Accepted: 31 Jul 2019
Published online: 07 Feb 2020 *

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