The age of artificial intelligence (AI) has transformed our interactions, but threatens human dignity on a worldwide scale, according to a study led by Charles Darwin University (CDU).
Study lead author Dr Maria Randazzo, an academic from CDU’s School of Law, found the technology was reshaping Western legal and ethical landscapes at unprecedented speed but was undermining democratic values and deepening systemic biases.
Dr Randazzo said current regulation failed to prioritise fundamental human rights and freedoms such as privacy, anti-discrimination, user autonomy, and intellectual property rights – mainly thanks to the untraceable nature of many algorithmic models.
Calling this lack of transparency a “black box problem”, Dr Randazzo said decisions made by deep-learning or machine-learning processes were impossible for humans to trace, making it difficult for users to determine if and why an AI model has violated their rights and dignity and seek justice where necessary.
“This is a very significant issue that is only going to get worse without adequate regulation,” Dr Randazzo said.
“AI is not intelligent in any human sense at all. It is a triumph in engineering, not in cognitive behaviour.
“It has no clue what it’s doing or why – there’s no thought process as a human would understand it, just pattern recognition stripped of embodiment, memory, empathy, or wisdom.”
Currently, the world’s three dominant digital powers – the United States, China, and the European Union – are taking markedly different approaches to AI, leaning on market-centric, state-centric, and human-centric models respectively.
Dr Randazzo said the EU’s human-centric approach is the preferred path to protect human dignity but without a global commitment to this goal, even that approach falls short.
“Globally, if we don't anchor AI development to what makes us human – our capacity to choose, to feel, to reason with care, to empathy and compassion – we risk creating systems that devalue and flatten humanity into data points, rather than improve the human condition,” she said.
“Humankind must not be treated as a means to an end.”
Human dignity in the age of Artificial Intelligence: an overview of legal issues and regulatory regimes was published in the Australian Journal of Human Rights.
The paper is the first in a trilogy Dr Randazzo will produce on the topic.
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