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The present report is submitted ... to discuss how artificial intelligence, including profiling, automated decision-making and machine-learning technologies may, without proper safeguards, affect the enjoyment of the right to privacy...

Nevertheless, deeply intertwined with the question of privacy are various impacts on the enjoyment of other rights, such as the rights to health, education, freedom of movement, freedom of peaceful assembly, freedom of association and freedom of expression.

In 2019 ... the Secretary-General of the United Nations recognized that ... new technologies are too often used to violate rights, especially those of people who are already vulnerable or being left behind, for instance through surveillance, repression, censorship and online harassment, including of human rights defenders. The digitization of welfare systems, despite its potential to improve efficiency, risks excluding the people who are most in need... In the security sphere, the Secretary-General reiterated his call for a global prohibition on lethal autonomous weapon systems...

Business enterprises have a responsibility to respect all internationally recognized human rights. This means that they should avoid infringing on the human rights of others and address adverse human rights impacts with which they are involved. Pillar II of the Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights provides an authoritative blueprint for all enterprises regarding how to meet this responsibility. The responsibility to respect applies throughout an enterprise’s activities and business relationships...

A human rights-based approach to AI requires the application of a number of core principles, including equality and non-discrimination, participation and accountability, principles that are also at the heart of the Sustainable Development Goals and the Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights. In addition, the requirements of legality, legitimacy, necessity and proportionality must be consistently applied to AI technologies...

States should also adopt robust export control regimes for the cross-border trade of surveillance technologies in order to prevent the sale of such technologies when there is a risk that they could be used for violating human rights, including by targeting human rights defenders or journalists...

States and businesses should ensure that comprehensive human rights due diligence is conducted when AI systems are acquired, developed, deployed and operated, as well as before big data held about individuals are shared or used...