AI/Robotics and Fundamental Rights

Fundamental rights are legal guarantees that constrain how power may be exercised, including the power embedded in automated systems. 

As AI is deployed across public and private spheres, it raises acute questions about the protection of rights that democracies have long taken for granted.

This pillar investigates the encounter between AI and the core rights framework: 

• How does algorithmic decision-making interact with the right to freedom, non-discrimination, privacy, and human dignity?
• What does due process require when consequential decisions are made, or shaped, by systems that resist full explanation?
• To what extent do human right laws and the AI Act together constitute an effective rights-protective framework, and where do the gaps remain?
• How do AI-powered technologies such as deep fakes influence the right to freedom of speech and information, and the right to privacy?
• How does the use of algorithms on online platforms influence the users, particularly vulnerable groups such as children and minorities?
 
The research is animated by a deeper tension: AI systems are often designed for efficiency and scale, while fundamental rights exist precisely to resist the logic of efficiency where it threatens the individual. 

Understanding how law navigates that tension and where it currently fails to do so, is both an urgent practical question and a foundational one for the legitimacy of AI governance.