Difference between revisions of "Human Rights"

Revision as of 15:40, 15 August 2025

Meme

Regulation

Does government regulation help or hurt actual delivery of Human Rights.

EU AI regs=

Is the EU really the "rights-based" leader in AI governance?

In our new paper "The Illusory Normativity of Rights-Based AI Regulation," my co-author Yiyang Mei and I argue that this widely accepted assumption fundamentally misunderstands how EU AI regulation actually works.

Our key finding: While rights language is everywhere in EU legal instruments (GDPR, AI Act, etc.), these "rights" function as administrative tools rather than foundational principles. They're used to manage technological disruption and geopolitical risk—not to express moral autonomy or democratic values.

We are deeply skeptical of the view that the EU’s expansive set of digital regulations as a kind of “digital constitution” manifesting the continent’s commitment to human-centric, rights-preserving, democracy-enhancing, and redistributive policies. Through comparative analysis across 5 domains (data privacy, cybersecurity, healthcare, labor, disinformation), we show that EU regulation is structured around institutional risk containment, not rights protection.

Takeaway: Before policymakers copy-paste aspects of the EU regulatory model, they might want to consider whether it lives up to its own ideals, and whether the tradeoffs arrived at in Europe are a good fit for their jurisdiction.

The https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=5389294 full paper is available on SSRN]. Would love to hear thoughts from folks working on AI governance, comparative law, and tech policy.

References