aceArtificial intelligence and its ‘slow violence’ to human rights
Abstract Human rights concerns in relation to the impacts brought forth by artificial intelligence (‘AI’) have revolved around examining how it affects specific rights, such as the right to privacy, non-discrimination and freedom of expression. However, this article argues that the effects go deeper, potentially challenging the foundational assumptions of key concepts and normative justifications of the human rights framework. To unpack this, the article applies the lens of ‘slow violence’, a term borrowed from…
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Published 2024-08-19, this peer-reviewed article argues that AI's impact on human rights extends beyond discrete violations to a deeper attritional degradation. Using the concept of slow violence, it contends individuals lose capacity to comprehend and contest AI-driven harms, discrete rights lose their normative justifications, and even broad notions of human dignity fail to capture new challenges
This matters because if accountability mechanisms premised on individual empowerment no longer function, existing human rights protections for privacy, expression and thought may become ineffective against AI systems. What remains uncertain from the abstract is how the proposed new accountability model would operate, what empirical cases demonstrate the attritional harm, and whether dignity-based frameworks can be adapted
- Article applies 'slow violence' lens from environmental justice to frame grinding, gradual, attritional harms of AI to human rights framework
- At individual level, person is increasingly unable to understand or seek accountability for harms from AI deployment, undermining framework's empowerment premise
- At rights level, AI unravels normative justifications for privacy, freedom of expression and freedom of thought
- At foundational level, even wide interpretations of human dignity are unable to address new challenges AI poses
Deployment of AI systems leaves individuals increasingly unable to understand or seek accountability for resulting harms, eroding the human rights framework's core function of empowering individuals against power disparities
The rundown
The paper structures the argument in three levels: the individual as rights-holder, the discrete rights themselves, and the foundational concept of human dignity, arguing each is degraded by AI's gradual effects
It notes existing human rights analysis has focused on specific rights impacts, but argues deeper foundational assumptions are challenged, and it offers an outline for a new model of accountability
Sources
- Peer-reviewedAI and Ethics2024-08-19
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