Some argue that the way we melted sand to make glass brought prosperity and a comparative advantage to Europe. Then, in North America, people melted sand to build the first chips, and those chips have continued to power technological and artificial intelligence (r)evolutions. Melting sand sounds so surreal, and yet someone, somewhere, tried it—and ended up creating incredible things that made even more advancements possible.
Unfortunately, we cannot melt sand to guide humanity through emerging legal frameworks. Those frameworks are most often established reactively, in response to what has already been melted—our rights and freedoms, melted down and reshaped into words meant to guide our states and ourselves toward a greater good (at least in theory). When done reactively, they often come at the cost of ‘victims’—like the modern human rights system, which was verbalized in the aftermath of the atrocities of the Second World War. The words of human rights documents are all too often built on the casualties of human rights violations.
And yet, even then—some rights go unnoticed, like little grains of sand. In my previous post, where I dissected OpenAI’s vision for digital transformation, I mentioned their penchant for embracing the freedom to innovate, which, in fact, aligns with Article 15 of the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights (ICESCR). The ICESCR is an international human rights treaty that has been in force since 1976 and was drafted in 1966 (though the United States signed it in 1977 but never ratified it). It was drafted in response to the non-binding and largely symbolic Universal Declaration of Human Rights.
The ICESCR is a ‘sister document’ to the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, and together they form the International Bill of Rights. This Bill comes in a pair for both ‘practical’ and ‘historical’ reasons—promulgated at the height of the Cold War, it became a kind of legal ‘collateral damage’, with totalitarian communist states refraining from adopting the covenant on civil and political rights, while capitalist and/or democratic states hesitated to advance the ICESCR. In 2021, the United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) also outlined a legal framework for ethical AI, which I will dissect in one of my upcoming posts.
Since some of you asked about the ICESCR, I want to explain it in a bit more detail—especially Article 15, which enshrines the right of everyone to enjoy the benefits of scientific progress and to benefit from the protection of moral and material interests arising from scientific, literary, or artistic production:
Article 15:
1. The States Parties to the present Covenant recognize the right of everyone […] (b) To enjoy the benefits of scientific progress and its applications.
It actually took 43 years for the international legal community to clarify Article 15th’s scope and provide detailed guidance on interpretation and implementation. As often happens with taxpayers—in this case, global taxpayers—we had to fly in all these experts to Venice, Italy, in July, so they could reach a consensus and deliver the Venice Statement on the Right to Enjoy the Benefits of Scientific Progress and its Applications. Meanwhile, some were likely trying to ‘melt sand’ at the seashore. Here are the outcomes—the Venice Statement outlines how we, as a global community, can engage with, among other things:
1). Protection from the adverse effects of science;
2). Freedom of scientific research and communication;
3). Enjoyment of the benefits of scientific progress.
Basically, it reaffirms the notion that access to scientific progress is a human right, and so protecting society from its negative consequences is essential—with the burden placed on states to ensure they mitigate the harmful impacts of the digital (r)evolution. Moreover, the aim of science should be the benefit of humanity as a whole, as it constitutes a global scientific public good. Furthermore, researchers ought to have freedom, and their intellectual property should be protected.
In paragraph 14 of the Venice Statement, it is emphasized that the duty to respect these rights should include “appropriate measures to prevent the use of science and technology in a manner that could limit or interfere with the enjoyment of human rights and fundamental freedoms.” It also sets out obligations for the state “to monitor the potential harmful effects of science and technology, to effectively react to the findings, inform the public in a transparent way, [and] provide opportunities for public engagement in decision-making about science and technology and their development” (paragraph 16).
In recent years, we have been trying to melt sand to set up the framework of AI safety, to outline the new, while neglecting what already exists. And I do not blame anyone—collectively, as humanity, when not in peril, we tend to ignore such words as ‘democracy’ and ‘human rights’, let alone some lofty language put together by dysfunctional international organizations filled with bureaucrats and the stacks of paper they produce, often without caring enough about the feasibility of implementation.
But not to be too bitter—I do not expect them, the UN bureaucrats to do the job for us. As much as I hope each and every one of us embraces the notion of being global taxpayers and demands scrutiny on the efficiency and deliverables of such entities, it is we who must melt the sand. There is a crowd—like grains of sand—that, when coming together in awareness and action, can make a difference. And that crowd is made of aware people. Perhaps you care about various economic, social, and cultural rights. If so, and if you are a US citizen, you can lobby for the US to ratify the ICESCR. And ‘sofa-lovers’ may argue that now is not the best political moment to think about ratifying human rights treaties—but as the late civil rights champion and congressperson from Georgia, John R. Lewis, taught us: “Change often takes time. It rarely happens all at once [… it] is not the struggle of one judicial appointment or presidential term.”
We do not need to reinvent the legal wheels—we just need to bring the grains of sand together.
Works Cited:
Miodownik, M. (2015, February 8). How looking through glass made us view the world in a different light. The Guardian. https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2015/feb/08/how-glass-made-us-see-world-clearly
60 years of integrated circuits. (2018). Nature Electronics, 1(9), 483–483. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41928-018-0145-6
Legal Documents Cited:
Universal Declaration of Human Rights (Resolution 217 A [III]), adopted by the United Nations General Assembly on 10 December 1948. United Nations General Assembly.
International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, adopted on 16 December 1966, United Nations Treaty Series, vol. 999, p. 171. United Nations.
International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights, adopted on 16 December 1966, United Nations Treaty Series, vol. 993, p. 3. United Nations.
Venice Statement on the Right to Enjoy the Benefits of Scientific Progress and its Applications, adopted in July 2009. United Nations Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights.
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