Does artificial intelligence undermine or enhance digital citizens rights?
PARKWOOD – Power said that people should have the same rights offline as they do online, bringing some of the uses of AI into question.
While digital media has created endless platforms for citizens to exercise their right to freedom of expression, artificial intelligence (AI) can also pose a risk to some human rights.
Media Monitoring Africa together with the Goethe-Institut in Parkwood hosted a digital workshop discussing the rights of digital citizens.
Legal practitioner Tina Power led much of the discussion on the implications of AI on information rights.
She explained that AI, as we know it at present, makes use of mathematical models inspired by research in neuroscience, algorithms and big data to gain user information.
According to Power, data can be collected through provision (when you share your information online), observed data, derived data and inferred data (which is the most problematic, since this makes predictions about you based on data collected, sometimes impacting your human rights).
Power said people should have the same rights offline as they do online, bringing some of the uses of AI into question.
For example, digital spaces can be wonderful platforms for freedom of expression, but also content moderation.
Power described content moderation as the depublication, downraking and sometimes outright censorship of information or user accounts from social media and other digital platforms, usually based on an alleged violation of a platform’s community standards policy.
Phakamile Khumalo, who heads up the MMA web rangers programme, discussed the work of the programme to promote active digital citizenry among children. She said the organisation helped to construct a digital rights charter for children promoting online safety, access to Internet and online participation. Khumalo added that there were still gaps in the digital curricula in schools preventing children from leading in the digital space.
Power concluded by discussing the right to access and inclusion online. She pointed out that there were a number of barriers to access in South Africa including digital divides based along race and class lines, lack of digital skills and harms faced offline being equal to those online.
“The discriminatory access to the Internet further undermines the rights to equality and non-discrimination guaranteed both by the constitution and under international human rights law. Because access to the Internet is crucial to [children’s rights], it should therefore follow that all [children] have the right to equal access to the Internet. However, due to the current digital divide, this is not borne out in practice, and serves to entrench the existing socio-economic divides in the country,” said Power.
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