Artificial Intelligence, Law, and Vulnerabilities
Jude Dzevela Kong, Kesha Fevrier, Jake Okechukwu Effoduh, Nicola Luigi Bragazzi · 2022
This chapter engages with legal frameworks that can attend to the potential negative impacts of Big Data and Artificial Intelligence (AI) systems on socially vulnerable populations in the global South. The chapter is primarily concerned with issues of social vulnerability, and how a critical approach to international law can help safeguard the rights and freedoms of the socially vulnerable. To this end, the following question grounds this chapter: how can we best leverage the growing international law in this area to design policies and legislative actions that can give voice to socially vulnerable populations in the global South? How can we engage people in sub-Saharan Africa and other parts of the global South as relevant stakeholders, ensure their equitable access to new technologies and provide legal protection that can properly safeguard them from violations related to the misuse of Big Data and AI? We use the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic and its differential impacts on populations in the global South to scaffold our argument.