Author: Parul Sardana
III Year | Banasthali Vidyapith University, Rajasthan
The concept of Artificial Intelligence (AI) is an emerging concept of modern times. Artificial Intelligence has shifted society from human-intensive work to machines and robots. Though AI is an interesting field that has a wide scope, it has also attracted some debates and one such debate is that this transformation is a threat to human rights.
While artificial intelligence offers many benefits such as helping in the progress of a nation, at the same time it also affects the fundamental rights of a person. Artificial Intelligence and Human Rights intersect in a unique way that has both positives and negatives.
What is Artificial intelligence?
Artificial Intelligence is understood to be the stimulation of human intelligence in machines that are programmed to think like humans and mimic their actions.
The unique feature of AI is its ever-evolving mechanism, through which it solves problems and improvises itself. AI is a system that is programmed to work and act like humans. It is believed that it will eventually be able to mimic and perform the same tasks as a human would.
Artificial Intelligence, Human Rights – The Intersection:
Over time humans have become more reliant on machines to make processes efficient. This has given rise to a conflict between artificial intelligence and human rights. If left unchecked, artificial intelligence can create inequality, eventually leading to serious violations of human rights across the globe. However, every coin has two sides, if AI on one hand violates human rights on the other it also increases shared prosperity and creates a better future for us.
Right to Privacy:
The Indian Constitution encompasses the Right to Privacy under Article 21, which is a requisite of the right to life and personal liberty.
AI gathers massive amounts of information, including streams of data from mobile devices and other electronics, and extrapolates. It further enables professionals to make data-driven decisions based on unique insights from the data collected. While it sounds interesting and much in favour of these data companies, it also poses a great threat to the collective privacy of customers and competitors.
Companies that want to avoid compromising privacy should put additional safeguards in place. These include data anonymization techniques or actively screening algorithms for privacy issues.
Protection against Unemployment:
Article 23 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR) states that every person has a right to work according to his choice. This right gives protection against unemployment. The emergence of AI goes against this very principle.
AI enables the promotion of efficiency but unfortunately, it also gives birth to an era of unemployment by replacing human labour. The emergence of AI has led to a decreased rate of employment and a decrease in wages also.
The need of the hour is to develop a strong human rights framework to address the issues and loopholes of Artificial Intelligence. While AI is the future, it also poses a potential threat to humans in terms of privacy and job security. There is an urgent need to address these issues and strike a balance between the ever-evolving AI and Human Rights.
 INDIA CONST. art. 21