Involved rights beyond privacy

Involved rights beyond privacy

Involved rights beyond privacy

Isn’t it enough to deal with the protection of personal data to solve the risks of automation for the exercise of people’s rights? More than once we have had to face this question, asked by governments, the technical community, international development organizations, academics, legislators, the press and a long etcetera. And the answer is no. Regulation of personal data is undoubtedly an essential piece for the proper operation of AI, but not the only one.

In our region, Bolivia and Ecuador totally lack legal frameworks for the protection of personal data; Brazil and Paraguay lack independent authorities to ensure adequate compliance with existing regulations; The limitations in their competencies prevent the Colombian authority from adequately supervising public organizations and the Chilean authority from supervising private ones. Not to mention the update level of the prevailing standards in the region: issues such as automated processing of large volumes of data, algorithmic transparency and explainability, human intervention obligations, and algorithmic auditing -among other concepts- are not addressed by local legislation.

All this to say that the statutes of protection of personal data are not suitable to provide a control and supervision framework for the implementation of AI in our region.

Now, back to the central point, although a large number of risks involved in the implementation of automated decision-making systems can be addressed from the angle of personal data, due to the individual implications that they bring, many of these risks materialize in limiting the exercise of collective rights, of an economic, social or cultural nature, which impact not one but entire groups of individuals who may be massively discriminated against, watched over and censored by these technologies.¹⁰

Ethics is not enough, in democratic states where there is a normative commitment to promote and protect human rights, those technologies that fundamentally impact the exercise of civil, political, economic, social and cultural rights, demand regulatory intervention, whatever the creative, multidisciplinary and flexible way in which States can approach this challenge.

As developed by the Global Information Society Watch 2019,¹¹ published by the Association for the Progress of Communications (APC), different forms of artificial intelligence or automated decision-making encompass the provision of basic services “from transportation to health; from agriculture to waste disposal; from surveillance to wellness, and from smart home technology to space exploration. Automated decision making is increasingly used in critical services and in the provision of infrastructure in areas such as employment, housing, access to education, commerce and access to credit, which impacts people’s lives in a deep way.” The implementation of this type of technologies is a way of modeling not only individual behavior, but of complete social and economic interactions, which are intended to be redrawn through them.

Finally, it is worth asking about the role that these technologies can fit to promote the fulfillment of the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs),¹² which require that initiatives to end poverty through economic growth address a series of social needs such as education, health, social protection and employment opportunities as a priority; while promoting environmental protection, gender equality and inclusion, in order to reduce inequality.

¹⁰ Monique Mann y Tobias Matzner, Challenging algorithmic profiling: The limits of data protection and antidiscrimination in responding to emergent discrimination.

¹¹ Available at: https://giswatch.org/sites/default/files/gisw2019_artificial_intelligence.pdf

¹² https://www.un.org/sustainabledevelopment/es/sustainable-development-goals/

From the framework provided by international human rights standards, the regulations developed around automated decision-making systems should aim to safeguard human dignity, ensure collective and individual agency, and materialize equity and social justice. In all this, privacy is an essential component that requires urgent updating, but does not exhaust the risk areas generated by these technologies.

Involved rights beyond privacy

Table of Contents