IT for Change and the Center for Global Digital Justice made a joint submission in response to the OHCHR call for input to inform the thematic study of the Expert Mechanism on Right to Development on "Artificial Intelligence, Cultural Rights and RIght to Development".
In our submission, we highlighted the following risks posed by the current trajectory of AI on cultural rights from a right to development perspective:
(i) Capture of epistemic infrastructures and perpetuation of the neo-colonial development project
(ii) Commodification of the whole of sociality
(iii) Erosion of the capacity for the free development of all cultures
(iv) Inadequacy of copyright framework in protecting collective cultural expression
In the context, regulation of AI is necessary to protect cultural rights and further the right to development, especially given the disparity in power, resources and AI capabilities among countries and Big Tech actors, and the potential for wide-ranging harms from AI systems to cultural and epistemic infrastructures. In our submission, we recommended the following axes for regulating AI:
1. A global governance framework for training data that promotes the right to collective development and cultural self-determination. This entails firstly, recognition that data is an outcome of social relations and, secondly, that data offers value that extends beyond the private interests of organizations, with the potential to benefit society at large.
2. Reforming the global and national IP and trade secrets regime to reconfigure the balance between proprietary rights on one hand, and transparency, accountability and public interest on the other. This include treating data as an essential cultural infrastructural good, pluralizing intellectual property, and extending existing frameworks that recognize collective knowledge rights to sectoral data governance. "
Read our detailed submission here.