Challenges to Fundamental Human Rights in the age of Artificial Intelligence Systems: shaping the digital legal order while upholding Rule of Law principles and European values

Abstract

Recently, the concept of the ‘European digital legal order’ seems to have gained more importance than the overarching concept of European legal order, of which the former is arguably a modern manifestation. The European legal order traditionally entails a set of fundamental human rights, Rule of Law principles and Democratic values as enshrined in the multinational legal order. From maintaining the Rule of Law derive the sustainability of Democratic values, and freedoms under the law enshrined in fundamental human rights. To the extent that the European digital legal order is the manifestation of the European legal order in the modern digital world, the fundamental question of the nature, scope and upholding of fundamental human rights, Rule of Law principles and Democratic values remains. Without disputing the need for digital transformation and its proper regulation, this paper will turn its attention to the current status of fundamental principles in the modern setting of democratic societies.

Artificial Intelligence or Artificial Intelligence Systems are technologies that have and will have a serious impact on the European legal order at large. Without dismissing the value of a human-centered regulatory approach in the field of AI, in this paper we discuss why this may be difficult as digitisation and algorithmisation deepen. This paper reviews the regulatory framework of AI and proposes potential new/renewed/modernised rights that should enhance and/or supplement the current catalogue of fundamental human rights, as contained inter alia in the EU Charter and the ECHR. This paper also argues that regulatory standards regarding AI should be clearer and stronger as well as suggests a new wording of some standards. The particular new rights and/or their new wording will be suggested in the paper.