UN official Calls for Ban on Artificial Intelligence Systems Threatening Human Rights

The United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights,    Michelle Bachelet, called on the United Nations (UN) to coordinate with various countries in the world to stop selling and using artificial intelligence systems that pose a serious threat to human rights.

Bachelet stressed that such a ban must be in effect until appropriate safeguards are adopted.

She called for a ban on artificial intelligence applications that cannot be used in line with international human rights law.

In a statement issued to coincide with the 48th session of the United Nations Human Rights Council (UNHRC), Bachelet added that artificial intelligence may constitute a force for spreading good, helping societies to overcome some of the prominent challenges of the current era.

But she warned that artificial intelligence (AI) technologies may also carry negative and potentially catastrophic effects if used without adequate consideration of how they affect human rights.

A report by the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights on technology and human rights analyzes how AI, including classification, decision-making, and other learning technologies, affects people's right to privacy and other rights, including the rights to health, education, freedom of movement and freedom of assembly, and peaceful association and freedom of expression.

Bachelet said that the danger of artificial intelligence is that it has touched every aspect of people's physical, mental, and even emotional life, and is used to determine who gets public services and who has the opportunity to get a job.

AI also affects the type of information that people see and can share over the Internet."

The UN report noted that AI in many cases revealed significant challenges where people were treated unfairly because of it, such as being denied Social Security compensation due to faulty AI tools or being arrested for faulty facial recognition systems.

She added that artificial intelligence systems rely on large sets of data that include information about inpiduals that are collected, shared, combined, and analyzed in a variety of and often opaque ways.