AI Expert Calls for Digital Agency as a Human Right
AI governance expert Shoshana Rosenberg has called for the formal recognition of digital agency as a fundamental human right. This comes as AI systems, such as those powered by Gemini and ChatGPT, increasingly shape access to rights, services, and opportunities, raising challenges to privacy, autonomy, and basic human rights.
Currently, legal frameworks like the EU's AI Act do not secure operational explainability for individuals affected by AI-driven decisions. Without digital agency, people are exposed to systems that decide without visibility, affect without consent, and deny meaningful redress. Rosenberg argues that this is similar to the recognition of the human right to privacy in 1948, which did not significantly influence digital regulation until systemic harms emerged. To secure digital agency, explainability must be embedded into AI systems at the design level, making system outputs understandable, accessible, and actionable. This requires organizations like the European Commission, IEEE, and OECD to establish minimum explainability standards. AI systems, including chatbots like Gemini and ChatGPT, are reshaping decision-making across critical areas of life, making the ability to understand, evaluate, and respond to AI-driven decisions a structural requirement for exercising human rights.
Recognizing digital agency as a human right is a crucial step to ensure that digital agency protections are established before dependencies erode autonomy beyond repair. Mandating minimum viable explainability ensures that individuals retain agency within AI-mediated environments. By embedding explainability by design, AI systems must support functional understanding from the outset, making influencing factors and decision outcomes intelligible enough for individuals to assess, understand, and act upon meaningfully.
