Privacy International contributed to the inquiry of the UK Joint Committee on Human Rights to examine how human rights can be protected in the age of Artificial Intelligence (AI).

We believe that this inquiry is particularly important given that many of these AI applications and technologies are already being rolled out in the UK, by both public and private entities, and their adverse effects must be urgently addressed to prevent further risks to human rights. 

In both our written and oral evidence we recommended that AI be treated:

• like any other form of technology, and expect compliance with human rights and other frameworks;
• as a form of infrastructure that will introduce new dependencies, where accountability and independence must be maintained; and
• as a highly adaptable form of technology deployed in specific circumstances, and protect people who will be affected in a diversity of ways. 

In particular, we drew attention to a core aspect of AI tools and AI policy, namely that it motivates the processing of vast amounts of personal data. 

The information we presented served to show how the deployment of AI systems are impacting human rights in the UK by sharing specific applications of AI and automated systems in given domains of use (e.g. health, welfare, migration, borders, policing, conflict, education), in relations to specific types of AI applications (e.g. analysis, prediction), with regard to the context into which they are deployed (e.g. workplace, public spaces, schools), the purpose, and who is affected (e.g. general public, children, health communities, migrants) as they impact of a variety of rights, and raise specific regulatory issues.

For nearly a decade the UK Government has missed numerous opportunities to regulate the use of AI and has not adopted a robust and legally binding instrument, and it yet it keeps pushing deployment despite considerable prior government IT project failures. 

We hope that both the UK Parliament and the UK Joint Committee on Human Rights will seize the crucial role they can play in plugging a gap that continuously arises in UK technology policy, rather than wait until the next IT failure and crisis. 

We look forward to supporting the efforts of the UK Joint Committee on Human Rights over the course of its inquiry as we continue to advocate for the effective regulation of AI which is founded on the protection of people, their rights, autonomy and dignity.