Protective Solutions to Three Generations of Human Rights in Light of AI Emergence

Document Type : Original Independent Original Article

Authors

• Emad Oboudiyat ¹
• Mansoureh Sharifi Sadr ²

¹ PhD Student in International Laws, University of Qom, Iran

² PhD student of International Relations, Faculty of Theology, Law and Political Sciences, Science and Research Unit, Islamic Azad University, Tehran, Iran.

Abstract

Highlights

Introduction

Due to the contradictions institutionalized in many documents developed by the United Nations experts and the Human Rights Council rapporteurs, the authors of this paper aim to conduct a critical analysis of such remarks that mainly focus on the right to privacy. As a result, the authors adopted a scientific approach to recognizing the outcomes of AI and other modern technologies while taking into account the requirements for dealing with phenomena that include fundamental transformations in human life. The authors believe that the effects of modern technologies must be analyzed accurately by different experts on newly-emerged technologies, international laws, and environmental ethics. Accordingly, this paper reviews the literature on international organizations and modern technology experts through an adaptive approach. The research hypothesis states that the prerequisite to the formulation of international norms on AI is to take a hierarchical look at human rights and prioritize intergenerational rights such as the right to not being discriminated over other rights such as the right to privacy. Unfortunately, it is extensively being violated by states with no consensus on the protection of these rights.

 

Methodology

In addition to classifying the three generations of human rights, this paper defined the transgenerational rights, presented an introduction to the principles of human continuity, and addressed the effectiveness of AI on these rights. The research hypothesis stated that the main AI threat to civil rights would be the classification, discrimination, and violation of the right to the determination of destiny. Consequently, some recommendations were made to develop appropriate mechanisms for preserving different generations of human rights in order to deal with the above challenges. A descriptive-analytical method was then adopted to analyze the adaptive interpretation of international documents and electronic library data.

It is suggested that the three generations of human rights be classified conceptually rather than according to the transformations and approval history of international documents, which are a function of political equations and the roles of governmental and non-governmental actors. Therefore, the current classification that includes personal rights, social rights, and transgenerational rights (i.e., rights of the future generations) will be based on a kind of spectral continuity stating that there are no certain boundaries between these rights in many cases. At the same time, the hierarchical nature of this classification necessitates the analysis of various aspects of human rights in relation to the guiding principles and without any policy contradictions.

 

Results and Discussion

According to the current observations, AI in its status quo has jeopardized personal rights more than anything else. Although the threats to personal rights have potentially been recorded in nearly all laws in the aforesaid classification, the following three axes are more prevalent:

1. Threat to employment
2. Systemic discriminations
3. Threat to privacy

Regarding collective rights, AI empowers hostile actors to achieve certain goals such as the violation of the right to destiny. Therefore, international mechanisms should be developed to prevent such roles. Given the complexity of topics on AI as well as the rights of future generations and human continuity that would require answers to various existential questions, this study mainly focused on the third generation of rights concerning only the right to education and its outcomes.

Considering the lopsided concentration of UN institutions of human rights on privacy, it is unfortunate to see international recommendations fail for the following reasons:

1. Lack of any accurate definitions of feasibilities and limitations of user information accumulation and data storage hierarchy by service–security groups;
2. Presentation of contradictory recommendations by human rights institutions such as forcing states to collect ethnic information on citizens and limiting data collection options in compliance with identity politics inspired by the politicization of human rights;
3. Low levels of privacy in the hierarchy of human rights and views of decision-makers in comparison with certain rights such as the right to peace or pursuit of certain policies such as confrontation to racial discrimination or organized crimes that would discredit or trivialize the violation of privacy.

 

Conclusion

The authors believe that international documents should leave behind general propositions and include the important problem of hierarchy in their concepts. Accordingly, it would not be sufficient to classify the information on citizens only as certain categories such as financial information or health information. In fact, necessary classifications should be performed in each category. For instance, people’s health records may contain general information such as vaccination dates, of which the public transportation systems should be aware. In these records, it is also necessary to keep certain categories on personal psychology through encryption technologies so that any dissemination of information without personal consent would be considered a crime.

Finally, addressing transgenerational rights and people’s responsibilities for human continuity can help answer existential questions about AI. It would be seemingly helpful to formulate the third generation of human rights as the transgenerational rights and human continuity principles. Considered the child of religion and ethical philosophy, human rights will then return to its basic principles adapted from certain concepts such as human dignity.

Keywords

• Artificial intelligence (AI)
• Big data
• Machine learning algorithms
• Generations of human rights
• Rights of the future generations
• Trans generational rights
• Human continuity

Main Subjects

• Human Rights
• Strategy
• Technology
• Information Technology (IT)