Artificial intelligence and human rights: Between law and ethics

The ethics and law of AI address the same domain, namely, the present and future impacts of AI on individuals, society, and the environment. Both are meant to provide normative guidance, proposing rules and values on which basis to govern human action and determine the constrains, structures and functions of AI-enabled socio-technical systems. This article examines the way in which AI is addressed by ethical and legal rules, principles and arguments. It considers the extent to which the demands of law and ethics may pull in different directions or rather overlap, and examines how they can be coordinated, while remaining in a productive dialectical tension. In particular, it argues that human/fundamental rights and social values are central to both ethics and law. Even though they can be framed in different ways, they can provide a useful normative reference for linking ethics and law in addressing the normative issues arising in connection with AI.