The Accelerator Fellowship Programme at the Institute for Ethics in AI, University of Oxford, is delighted to announce the publication of a new white paper by Professor Yuval Shany, The Need for and Feasibility of an International AI Bill of Human Rights. Produced during his 2024–2025 Accelerator Fellowship, the paper is accompanied by a podcast, “AI and Human Rights: Professor Yuval Shany on AI, Law and Global Accountability”.
Artificial intelligence (AI) is rapidly reshaping how we live, work, and are governed. It offers opportunities to improve health, labour safety, transport, and education, yet also places human rights such as equality and privacy under considerable pressure through practices including profiling and large-scale surveillance. The ‘black box’ nature of many AI systems raises further concerns around transparency, accountability, and the ability of individuals to seek effective redress.
“We are rushing headlong into an AI-driven future, but our legal protections remain stuck in the past,” Professor Shany writes in his accompanying University of Oxford Expert Comment news piece: "Is it time to reconsider our human rights in the age of AI?"
In his view, the challenge is no longer whether AI affects human rights, but whether our current human rights frameworks can keep pace.
Recent years have seen a proliferation of AI-related regulations, strategies, and soft-law initiatives at national, regional, and international levels. Yet, as the white paper and consultations underline, the result is often a fragmented patchwork of measures: some too general, some highly technical, and many not framed in the language of human rights law. This makes it harder to address cross-border harms coherently or to allocate responsibility when things go wrong.
Drawing on expert consultations with four leading human rights centres – the Bonavero Institute of Human Rights (Oxford), the Geneva Academy of International Humanitarian Law and Human Rights, the Harvard Human Rights Program, and the Pretoria Centre for Human Rights – the white paper argues that the world could benefit from an international AI Bill of Human Rights.
It offers an initial list of seven rights that should guide the design, deployment, and governance of AI systems globally:
- Access to safe AI: access to safe, reliable AI tools and related technologies.
- Privacy protections: protection from AI systems’ mass data capture and surveillance.
- Freedom from bias and unfairness: systems designed to prevent discrimination.
- Transparency and explainability: knowing when AI is used and receiving meaningful, understandable explanations of how it contributed to decisions affecting one’s rights.
- Protection from manipulation: safeguards against AI systems that exploit vulnerabilities and steer behaviour in ways that undermine autonomy and dignity.
- Human decision-making and interaction: preserving meaningful human oversight and human-to-human interaction where important interests are at stake.
- Accountability and remedy: clear responsibility and effective remedies when harms arise from the use of AI systems.
The aim, Professor Shany stresses, is not to halt innovation, but to ensure that human rights and AI advance together. We invite you to read the white paper and listen to the podcast, which together contribute to a crucial global conversation about law, technology, and human dignity.
Useful links:
Notes for Editors
Ambassador Audrey Tang is available for interviews. For more information, please contact: aiethicscomms@philosophy.ox.ac.uk
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