Human rights are not an abstract concept, but an acute concern. Billions are deprived of the basic … [+] essentials to thrive. Can generative AI help us change this?
gettyToday, on International Human Rights Day, we celebrate the enduring vision of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, adopted in 1948. Despite progress over the past 75 years, much remains to be done to realize these rights for everyone, everywhere.
As we navigate the complexities of the 21st century, generative artificial intelligence emerges as an intriguing tool to finally bridge the gap between human rights ideals and the lived experiences of people worldwide. Time is overdue, but are our mindsets ready?
The Unfinished Journey Toward Universal Human Rights
Global poverty reduction has reached a near standstill, with the decade from 2020 to 2030 projected to be a lost period in the fight against poverty. Today, nearly one in ten people live on less than $2.15 per day, the extreme poverty line for low-income countries, according to the World Bank. Additionally, 44% of the global population, around 3.5 billion people, live on less than $7 per day, which is the poverty line for upper-middle-income countries.
While we are excited about the fast-paced technology that changes life as we know it, billions of people lack access to clean water and healthy food, health care, and education. To make this gloomy picture even darker, unjustifiable gender disparities continue, as do exploitation, violence, and abuse.
Generative AI: A Tool For Human Advancement
Generative AI, capable of producing human-like text, images, and other media, offers innovative solutions to these complex problems plaguing society for centuries. Some examples:
Education Accessibility: AI-powered platforms like Khan Academy use AI tutors to provide personalized learning experiences, helping bridge educational gaps. Their new initiative, Khanmigo, uses AI to simulate prosocial AI-powered one-on-one tutoring for students worldwide.
Healthcare Innovation: AI is changing healthcare diagnostics. For instance, DeepMind’s AlphaFold has predicted the 3D structures of over 200 million proteins, accelerating drug discovery and disease understanding. Eventually, advancements of this type can lead to treatments for diseases that disproportionately affect underserved populations and that have received little funding in the past.
Human Rights Monitoring: The Human Rights Data Analysis Group employs AI to analyze data from conflict zones, identifying patterns of human rights abuses that might be overlooked. This assists international organizations in holding perpetrators accountable.
Economic Inclusion: AI-driven financial services are extending credit to underserved communities. Companies like Branch use machine learning algorithms to offer microloans via mobile platforms, reaching millions without access to traditional banking.
Two shifts are needed to harness the social benefits. One is material, starting with the actual access to the internet for those who are excluded from the virtual world. Today, 2.6 billion people do not have access to the internet. Taking the benefit of generative AI to scale means Increasing connectivity to ensure everyone who wants to go online can do so. Digital inclusion is not abstract. The second shift is mental; from the ambition of AI as merely a driver of commercial profitability, we need to zoom in on the aspiration of positive social outcomes.
Seizing The Opportunity: AI As A Means To An End
To harness AI effectively to address the issues listed earlier, we must approach it as a means to achieve human rights goals, not an end in itself or a mere instrument for commercial benefit.
Pro-social and pro-business are not an either-or equation; instead, they can be mutually beneficial – making them a win-win-win-win for the people we are, the communities we belong to, the countries we are part of, and the planet we depend on. However, in pursuing an expressed ambition of human rights respect as a prime concern rather than a secondary consideration, the priorities are reversed, and the need to focus systematically on ethics and inclusion becomes evident.
Ethics: As evidenced ever and again by cases where AI systems have exhibited racial and gender discrimination in hiring or lending decisions, the old saying garbage in, garbage out still holds – biased data leads to biased outcomes. Moving towards an AI-saturated future, it is important to ensure that AI systems are systematically designed to be unbiased.
Inclusion: Developing AI solutions that consider the needs of marginalized communities requires us to expand the scope of interest beyond the usual target audience or people in high and middle-income countries. For example, UNICEF’s Innovation Fund invests in open-source AI projects that address challenges faced by children worldwide, particularly in low-income countries.
Reframing The AI Welfare Debate
The AI welfare discussion, which dives deep into the moral considerations for advanced AI systems and the potential rights of future sentient entities, presents an opportunity to refocus our attention on human well-being. Rather than diverting resources from pressing human rights issues to speculate about the rights of hypothetical AI beings, this heightened interest can reinforce our commitment to empowering humanity. By contemplating the ethical dimensions of AI, we are reminded of the importance of addressing the challenges people worldwide face today.
While ethics and inclusion may appear as abstract lofty goals, they start with practical, straightforward actions by those who create and utilize these technologies. Diverse development teams are essential for building unbiased AI systems that serve everyone equitably. When people from different backgrounds contribute to AI development, the resulting technologies are more likely to be fair and inclusive. Transparency and accountability in AI practices foster trust and encourage responsible use, ensuring that AI systems are held to ethical standards.
Furthermore, educating users about AI empowers them to make informed decisions, enhancing the likelihood that technology positively influences society. Double literacy, combining a holistic understanding of our natural intelligence and artificial assets, is central to that endeavor.
Building Collaborative Frameworks For ProSocial AI
As we observe International Human Rights Day amid the relentless hype surrounding generative AI technologies like ChatGPT, it’s important to recognize that while AI holds immense potential for humankind, its ultimate value lies in how we harness it to advance human rights and global well-being.
The concept of ProSocial AI — AI systems that are tailored, trained, tested, and targeted to bring out the best in and for people and the planet — embodies this philosophy. By focusing on ProSocial AI, we commit to developing technologies that are:
Tailored to address specific challenges different communities face, ensuring relevance and effectiveness.
Trained on diverse and representative data to eliminate biases and promote fairness.
Tested rigorously to ensure safety, reliability, and ethical compliance.
Targeted toward initiatives that promote social good, environmental sustainability, and global equity.
ProSocial AI offers a pathway to leverage technology that uplifts humanity, reduces inequalities, and fosters shared prosperity. It aligns with the urgent need to accelerate progress on human rights, especially in light of recent stagnation in poverty reduction and rising inequalities.
Now, we have the means – do we have the desire?
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{URL}https://www.forbes.com/sites/corneliawalther/2024/12/10/can-we-harness-ai-to-fulfill-the–promise-of-universal-human-rights/{/URL}
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