The Australian Human Rights Commission is currently working on a project to 'explore the challenges and opportunities that technology poses to our human rights'. Its focus includes responsible innovation, decision-making and artificial intelligence, and accessible technology.
These questions arise against a backdrop of government incursions into human rights through technology, such as the 'robodebt' saga, the NSW suspect target management system, and a raft of commonwealth legislation expanding Australia's surveillance architecture.
The Human Rights Commission Issues Paperposes a number of questions, opening with: 'What types of technology raise particular human rights concerns? Which human rights are particularly implicated?' These questions in particular are difficult to answer. There are three main reasons for this. First, it is not technology itself that raises human rights concerns. Secondly, technology is everywhere and therefore hard to pin down. Thirdly, the questions presuppose that Australia has a human rights regime.
Technology is just a tool
While particular technologies may affect particular human rights, it is the design or deployment of technology, not the technology per se, that has the impact. Artificial intelligence or robots or big data do not infringe human rights simply because we know how to write code, or design machines in particular ways. It is only once these technologies are applied within a context that there is potential for adverse human rights outcomes.
Technology may of course be designed to meet a specific, ethically dubious outcome. Killer robots for example raise very obvious questions. But that does not make robotics in breach of human rights. Other technologies, such as machine learning algorithms that sort through job applications, may unintentionally affect human rights if the authors of the code have not considered inbuilt bias. But machine learning is not intrinsically in breach of human rights, nor is an automated job application process. Designers must simply be aware of the potential for bad outcomes.
The answer to the question of what sorts of technology raises human rights concerns is both all technology, and none. All may affect human rights, but none does necessarily.
Technology is everywhere
Related to the first point, is that we are surrounded by technology. If we were to regulate technology — or its design or application — just what would we be regulating? If we pass a law today, the technology that is the subject of the law will likely change within a year or two at least. The law would forever be playing catch up with the