Don’t Leave Artificial Intelligence Alone: It Could Hurt Human Rights

Abstract

We live in an era when the future of human rights in increasingly contentious. The ever-evolving technology and its impact on the human environment shape the debates on being human. How should the basic elements that make people human be discussed in the posthuman and postdigital era? Will the discussion of the legal status of non-human entities (such as robots) within the framework of rights lead to a reshaping of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights? These questions are important for discussing the future of human rights law in the posthuman and postdigital era. The expected change in human rights law may well be regarded as an extraordinary transformation. However, the realities of life changed by technology will also have some consequences in terms of international human rights law. The challenge created by Artificial Intelligence (AI) in the protection of human rights is one of these consequences. This chapter aims to reveal the conflict and tension that has arisen between human rights and AI. In this respect, human rights may be threatened and violated through AI tools, and so their application will be examined with sample cases. After defining the tension in question, the steps to be taken in the legal sense will be discussed. First, in order to discuss the possibility of assigning responsibility to AI tools, it will be examined whether an international legal personality can be attributed to AI tools. Subsequently, the importance of establishing and adopting legal regulations regarding AI tools will be emphasized. States play the main role in the formation of these legal regulations. So, in the formation of these legal regulations, both internal and external dimensions of State sovereignty will be analysed and the steps that States should take to prevent human rights violations in the posthuman and postdigital age will be explained. © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023.