RightsCon Tunis 2019

AI is advancing rapidly, thanks to ever-more-powerful computing, massive growth in the availability of digital data, and increasingly sophisticated algorithms. Due to these fast-paced and unpredictable innovations in technology, conducting human rights due diligence to predict, assess, and mitigate these risks can be particularly challenging. This workshop proposes to expand and enhance human rights due diligence methodology to more effectively address the uncertain impacts of new and disruptive technology and improve the quality of human rights due diligence. The workshop will bring participants together to explore the impacts of AI and to discern potentially unanticipated human rights-related risks and opportunities. The workshops will consider a set of “seeds of the future”—statements that describe a plausible future state in which a relevant AI application has reached scale (e.g., “driverless cars have become ubiquitous in large cities”). In small working groups, participants will then create “futures wheels,” diagrams similar to mind maps that identify potential first order, second order, and third order social, technological, economic, environmental, and political implications of that development. The groups will then consider possible human rights challenges and opportunities presented by these implications.