G-Change – Guarding Genuine Change: Countering Value-Hijacking Practices in the Transition Economy (funded 2025–2028)

Project Coordinator: prof. Maurizio Borghi (Università di Torino)
Team member (among others): Robert Simon (Euphur, Free University Bozen-Bolzano)

Partner Institutions (among others): Nexa Center for Internet & Society (Politecnico di Torino)

General outline of the research project

We call “value-hijacking” the market practice of exploiting and distorting counter-hegemonic ideals to gain an unfair competitive advantage or mislead stakeholders, without genuinely upholding those ideals and/or their underlying concerns. From a legal standpoint, these practices include, most notably, “greenwashing”, a legal term initially introduced to address false green statements in the financial sector and then expanded to encompass a broad range of deceptive claims about a company’s sustainability commitments. Subject to recent EU legislation, greenwashing is just the most visible example of unfair practices involving false, misleading, or deceptive assertions of “virtuous” market behaviours. The project explores legal and practical strategies to tackle greenwashing and other value-hijacking practices in the current economic phase as characterised by “transitions”, where both private companies and public administrations are required to show adherence to values such as environmental responsibility, ethical commitment and transparency.

Particular focus on technological change

Reflecting on transition in the epoch of late modernity, it is obvious that the main driver is technological change. While until recently, public and private sector debates revolved around the broad term of Digitalization, now the focus has shifted to a narrower understanding of Artificial Intelligence. Let alone that this specification is rather vague and, at least, ambiguous, it is what seems to shape all aspects and facets of human life. Regarding its implementation there is, on the one hand, a strong and mostly industry driven anti-regulation propaganda; on the other hand, there is a sense of protection of fundamental rights and prevention of harm promoted by politics, sciences, private initiatives and also companies claiming that a thorough assessment process is essential. These processes are based on concepts like Humane AI, Trustworthy AI, Responsible AI, Mindful AI etc. The questions that arise are twofold: first, it is necessary to interrogate the explicit and implicit conditions of these concepts in order to determine them as sufficiently as possible; second, there will be an examination of how and where these concepts are applied in the sense of value-hijacking practices rather than a genuine attempt to moderate technological change in favour of a sense of humanity.