Turning ethical Artificial Intelligence into reality implies assessing the risks of AI in context, particularly in terms of its impact on civil and social rights and then, depending on the assessed risk, defining standards or regulating the ethical design, development and implementation of algorithmic systems. This is the aim of this introductory handbook by the Council of Europe and the Alan Turing Institute, of late 2021, "Artificial Intelligence, Human Rights, Democracy and the Rule of Law: A Primer". A key initiative in this process was the feasibility study prepared and approved in December by the Council of Europe's Ad Hoc Committee on Artificial Intelligence (CAHAI), which explores options for an international legal response, based on Council of Europe standards in the fields of artificial intelligence, rights, democracy and the rule of law: it proposes nine principles and priorities that are well suited to the new challenges posed by the design, development and deployment of Artificial Intelligence systems. When codified into law, these principles and priorities create a set of interconnected rights and obligations that will work to ensure that the design and use of artificial intelligence technologies conform to the values of human rights, democracy and the rule of law. The key question is whether there are responses to the specific risks and opportunities presented by AI systems that can and should be addressed through the use of binding and non-binding international legal instruments, through the agency of the Council of Europe, which is the guardian of the European Convention on Human Rights, Convention 108, which protects the processing of personal data, and the European Social Charter.

Artificial Intelligence (AI) researchers may look back on 2018 as the year that human rights became crucial to advancing the technology. Over the last six months of the year, a slew of reports focused on "artificial intelligence and human rights" were published by a variety of well-respected entities, including the most recent report of the UN Special Rapporteur on freedom of opinion and expression, Berkman Klein's report on "Artificial Intelligence & Human Rights: Opportunities & Risks", Access Now's "Human Rights in the Age of Artificial Intelligence" report, The Council of Europe's Draft Recommendation of the Committee of Ministers to member States on human rights impacts of algorithmic systems, and Business for Social Responsibility's, "Artificial Intelligence: A Rights-Based Blueprint for Business" series. Earlier in the year, I was asked to help kick off a workshop organized by Data & Society on the same topic and I wrote this post based on the remarks I prepared for that conference, supplemented by a few takeaways from recent reports. I come to this issue as a trained lawyer who spent the last decade working on human rights, with a special focus on the issues of "business and human rights" and human rights online. I have seen how the international human rights (IHR) framework can enable better understanding and contestation of human rights norms, monitor and mitigate the risk of human rights abuses, generate input and output legitimacy, and facilitate trust and coalition-building.

This is the fifth blogpost in a series on Artificial Intelligence and Human Rights. Following Data & Society's AI & Human Rights Workshop in April, several participants continued to reflect on the convening and comment on the key issues that were discussed. The following is a summary of articles written by workshop attendees Bendert Zevenbergen, Elizabeth Eagen, and Aubra Anthony. In Marrying Ethics and Human Rights for AI Scrutiny, Bendert Zevenbergen (Princeton University) responds to a post by Christiaan van Veen and Corinne Cath, in which they advocate the value of applying a human rights framework in the development and deployment of AI. Both articles stemmed from workshop debates that considered the relevance of an ethical versus a human rights perspective in AI design and governance.

This blogpost was co-authored by Mark Latonero, PhD, Data & Society Research Lead, Data & Human Rights and Melanie Penagos, Data & Society Research Analyst, Data & Human Rights. The first blogpost in a series on Artificial Intelligence and Human Rights, it summarizes a multidisciplinary workshop held at Data & Society on April 26 and 27, 2018. Multiple sectors of our global society are grappling to make sense of how AI may transform or alter the way we live, work, and relate to one another and our institutions. At the same time, "Artificial Intelligence" is a slippery and highly contextual concept -- the way a mathematician defines AI can diverge significantly from a marketing executive or a causal reader of science fiction. This tension makes discussions about norms that could shape or regulate AI systems a thoroughly contested and challenging space.

"You are worse than a fool; you have no care for your species. For thousands of years men dreamed of pacts with demons. Only now are such things possible." When William Gibson wrote those words in his groundbreaking 1984, novel Neuromancer, artificial intelligence remained almost entirely within the realm of science fiction. Today, however, the convergence of complex algorithms, big data, and exponential increases in computational power has resulted in a world where AI raises significant ethical and human rights dilemmas, involving rights ranging from the right to privacy to due process.