Technology and Artificial Intelligence

• Updated on: 2020-09-19
• Read original article here

Technology and Artificial Intelligence
Civic freedoms, safeguards and transparency in the development of digital technologies and AI
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When law meets tech
Digital technology has transformed the way we exercise our rights and freedoms. On the one hand, it is an indispensable tool: organisations, movements and individuals use the online space to have meetings, protest, participate in decision making or undertake online campaigns.
On the other hand, digital activism is already experiencing threats and challenges, including internet shutdowns; surveillance or censorship; targeting of advocacy groups (e.g. via smearing campaigns and spread of disinformation); restrictions on online advocacy, campaigning and even fundraising as a result of policies countering online terrorism and extremism.  
Various algorithm-based mechanisms are also used in different ways to influence civic engagement: e.g., by governments in decision-making on whether to retain benefits for people with disabilities who attend street protests, facial recognition or social-media-scouring surveillance for the purpose of establishing “good credentials”, or tracing applications for responding to the COVID-19 pandemic. To avoid that such measures suppress the right to protest, privacy and free expression, they should be developed in transparent way and with participation of civil society.
To respond to the emerging tech and artificial intelligence (AI) systems we need safeguards for fundamental rights and civic freedoms to be streamlined into the development and functioning of AI systems or devices.
What's in focus?
We are currently exploring the following questions regarding the intersection of digital technologies and civic freedoms.
What does civic space look like in the digital age? How does automated decision-making impact our freedoms – for better and for worse? What exactly is AI? And how can civil society be a driving force and not just a mere observer of policy and regulatory developments around new technologies?
How to avoid harmful impact of some of the AI tech in use nowadays on already fragile and battered civic space, further weakened by the COVID-19 pandemic?
How to harness the benefits of technologies for the enabling of civic space; how can CSOs are actively seeking to understand the use of technological developments and AI to advance their work, and protect themselves from restrictions?
How to promote adequate, meaningful and participatory human rights impact assessments of the AI systems during their entire cycle and implementation?
How the current international legal framework of fundamental rights and freedoms, along with developed case-law standards, translates into (or can be reinterpreted and formalized into) algorithmic design and is safeguarded in practice?
Digital labs
Empower a critical mass of civil society groups and activists who can engage with tech companies and governments in the countries as well as with regional and global institutions in conversations about tech impact on rights and freedoms.
We are galvanising civil society movement and response to the EU consultation on the EU AI White Paper, a background document for EU’s regulatory efforts on AI that will materialise in 2021. We organised and held two online workshops  “The Unheard Voice of Civil Society in EU Policy on AI” for 20 regional and national CSO representatives aimed at raising awareness of the consultation on the EU AI White Paper, unpacking its content, narrowing down topics, highlighting potential gaps and empowering CSOs to submit their own opinion to the consultation. Contact us to join!
Creating knowledge base to understand the impact of digital tech and AI on civic freedoms and to unpack how digital tech and AI is already used or will be used in relation to civic freedoms. ECNL undertakes research and organizes capacity-building events with and for our partners and works with other CSOs to produce recommendations related to digital tech, AI and civic freedoms relevant for their contexts. We create tools for monitoring the application of AI on civic freedoms and work with other stakeholders to develop a set of indicators to assess the impact of tech on civic freedoms.
Standards
UN Human Rights Council Resolution on New and emerging digital technologies and human rights : ECNL contributed to the wording of the UN Human Rights Council Resolution on New and emerging digital technologies and human rights – as a follow up, the Human Rights Council commissioned a report on impact on technology on human rights.