Artificial Intelligence and Human Rights

Artificial intelligence (AI) has become omnipresent and significantly influences the state, society and individuals. It is essential for coping with pandemics, changes the healthcare sector, and individual healthcare. It is indispensable for traffic control and for partially regulating economics, such as through labour market administration or job recruitment. It is used for combating crime and in many other areas of our lives, even for steering individual behaviour. The resulting opportunities are enormous as are the threats and risks: the use of AI interferes with legally protected rights protected by national and European constitutional law as well as international human rights, first and foremost, the right to privacy. It is still unclear whether the potential threat just concerns certain human rights or whether it, more fundamentally, concerns the common core of all human rights, namely a human person’s autonomy. This poses the question of whether and how AI is regulated or should be regulated – i.e., which governance approaches or opportunities are possible as well as the limits of regulation. 

The AI and Human Rights working group wants to address these problems. It is an interdisciplinary research group focusing on law. Its research should contribute to more legal certainty in an adequate governance framework for this topic, a governance framework taking account of both the opportunities and the threats and risks of Artificial Intelligence.