AI ethics and human rights challenges

Artificial intelligence is everywhere these days. Most of us do not reflect much about what it does. Nevertheless, it is a part of our lives. We do get a lot of help from AI systems and the benefits are many. AI is fast, accurate, has a low cost and works around the clock. Artificial intelligence is a part of our infrastructure and helps with a vast number of things such as administration of justice (it assists in court with bail or pre-trial detention, sentencing), law enforcement (‘predictive policing’), healthcare (health risk, prevention, cures, cutting-edge research), and education (admissions to schools and universities, personalised education, feedback and engagement). It assists social security and social welfare (detecting fraud, checking entitlements and criteria for qualification), environment (systems for agriculture, irrigation, climate change challenges) and smart cities (waste management, mobility, traffic, air and water quality, safety and security of public places). (Sue Anne TEO, PhD Fellow, Center for Comparative European and Comparative Legal, Studies (CECS), Faculty of Law, University of Copenhagen.) “As a sociotechnical system, AI is embedded within society. Values and worldviews are baked into the design and development of emerging technologies. In turn, these values are reflected in technological tools that we use. There are consequences for society, such as discrimination”, says Sue Anne Teo, who looks into the challenges posed by AI systems to the foundations of human rights. She undertakes her research using a meta-theoretical framework, looking at threats to human rights foundations from conceptual, contextual (social and material existence conditions) and normative aspects. AI can have negative implications on human rights and concerns should be acknowledged. In this podcast, we talk to Sue Anne Teo about what AI is, how we usually define AI and what the benefits of AI are. We also talk about ethical challenges vis-à-vis AI and human rights. Sue Anne Teo highlights the importance of ethics, the prevention of AI-caused negative impacts on human rights, and explores actions policymakers and legislators are taking.