All human beings are born free and equal in dignity and rights. They are endowed with reason and conscience and should act towards one another in spirit of brotherhood.”
United Nations, Charter, 1945
Human life is sacred its dignity should become the source for the moral future of humanity. Mother Theresa once said “Human rights are not a privilege conferred by government. They are every human beings entitlement by virtue of humanity.” How can the society be organised to ensure that the rights of the people are respected with the changes we are seeing in terms of technology and in the environmental era of climate change. Is it time we realise that we are not alone on this Earth and that we share it with animals and nature and that they deserve also their rights?
The economy must serve the people and not the opposite, while the people are not the central piece of rights any longer, however they are there with nature whose rights have not been respected for a very long time. This requires the new form of rights and fairness justice system to be developed that would enable us to ensure that the rights of nature and animals are respected, human rights are protected on a global scale even in the time of technological advancement and that access to information is not abused by the elite or those in power who have access to such information.
Therefore, we need to start thinking not in the matter of if and when, however how will the progress serve the people, nature, animals and the nations, as well as how can we make sure that the rights of people, animals and nature are not in conflict rather they are respected, while we need to prepare that with progress and development we may even talk about the rights and obligations of robots to protect the people and nature.
- Technological progress and human rights
We should place our right to privacy and human dignity in the law also required to be adhered to by the technological organisations.
We are not users we are humans.
In recent years, with the development of technology the right for people for privacy and even the right to work have became jeopardized. The data management and privacy breaches have led many users vulnerable to data mismanagement practices. This is why, human rights are important pathway to protect human dignity in the era of technological advancement. The data could be aggregated in a way so that a single user or an organisation could not find or abuse this information.
We need to work towards designing the human rights in the world of technology. Humans should have the right to delete their social media accounts and all the information that the social media platforms and internet companies have on them. We should not look away against this human rights violations. It is our basic human right for privacy and we should be allowed to have our private information protected and have the right to delete our accounts and all the information that is present on all websites and computers, if we want to. These technological organizations shouldn’t have access to private information on its users unless otherwise authorized under certain circumstances. We need to preserve dignity and privacy of its users. The fact that, one person agrees to cookies and terms of conditions, when they (we) don’t have another choice (Apple, Google, etc.), doesn’t make it ok that these organisations have access to all your private information that is coming also from other websites and on everything you have done in the course of using their technology and other technology.
Governments keep on having these discussions that they have to limit the access to private information and preserve our right for privacy and dignity, however in the end they still allow the companies and businesses to do these things and instead of placing it into law that the abuse of information and access to private information shouldn’t be allowed and should be encrypted they allow them to continue collecting and abusing our information, if we allow access to it in terms of cookies, by complying to their terms and conditions or only by using their websites. While for some countries they allow these businesses to call us “users” instead of humans, when it is them that use and abuse us and our private information and the right for dignity and deletion of our information from their platforms.
Through social listening, access to our email accounts and search history, through facial recognition, through access to our passwords, through access to everything we have posted or searched on social media, social experiments they continue to have access to everything we hold dear and that protects us. We shouldn’t allow them to have access to our personal files and our internet and offline history, unless it is authorized when it is specifically needed either for security purposes or for regaining access to our files in case of forgotten password or for security needs and even than it shouldn’t be authorized without a warrant and possible knowledge of the person about access to their personal files.
What Apple and other internet companies, such as Google, Linkedin and Facebook do, when they give us their terms and conditions to read where they clearly state that they may have access to your personal files and information and that they may share your information with their business partners and external parties, and then give us an only choice to agree to all their terms and conditions doesn’t make it ok. It means that the only way you can use their product is, if you agree to their terms and conditions, while we don’t even know the full truth. But the thing is, they should agree to our terms and conditions and our human right to privacy, dignity and to delete our personal information. This requirement should be respected, because only then they should be allowed to sell our products. And, if we need to earn money on cookies they should be encrypted and they shouldn’t have the right to use and abuse our personal information in “social experiments” or any other ways.
Furthermore, they have millions or billions of users of their products (that are human) in each country and we don’t even have anyone to talk to even in our own language. For Facebook (and other social media platforms that they own) and Linkedin and possibly also X or Twitter we have absolutely no one to give complaint or to talk to on the matters over their platforms. Even Apple has very limited support for anything that happens with their products and its not even in our own language. There is no one we can talk to in regards to deletion of our accounts or deletion of all the information we have posted so far. No real person to talk to in regards to human rights violations and to resolve matters over deletion of our accounts. I believe it is our human right to have costumer support and not that all the complaints are handled by the artificial intelligence with no human contact. They earn billions of dollars, while they don’t even pay for a costumer support.
I propose that a new organisation is formed called World Technological Organisation that would monitor progress in terms of technology and propose the rights of people in the technologically advanced world and how technological organisations would and should respect our human rights for privacy and dignity, which they should work closely with United Nations in this respect. This organisation should monitor progress of AI or even work towards preventing AI from leading the technological progress at all. It could also monitor the progress of new technology such as robots and see in what ways it is beneficial for humanity. All technology should serve humanity and not humanity serving the technology. This organisation could evaluate the progress of new technology, perform research on whether it is beneficial for humanity and discuss the consideration of the development of this new technology.
We cannot anymore allow companies from other countries dictate the way they can operate in our own countries or across the world even in the countries that don’t have strong democratic or ethically inclined systems, which is why I believe an international organisation is an appropriate response to control the dignity of our human rights in technological era, while at the same time it could work with United Nations on the declaration of human rights and respect of them in the technological world. This organisation could also monitor the technology we have developed and its progress and research what may be harmful to humanity and what is beneficial to be developed, as well as provide solutions to potentially harmful technology. Leaders of different countries could negotiate and talk in ways on how to prevent harmful technology from destroying our democracies and preserve the human dignity and the right for privacy and deletion of all our private information.
At the same time, we have to talk about artificial intelligence, if it is or was managed correctly or, if we should still use it at all. In my opinion it is a stupid development in human history that is making humanity only more dumb and less smart. The problem with AI is that we think its smart, but it isn’t. The main idea behind AI, the machine learning and calculating algorithms, is that we think that with new information the AI becomes smarter or that it thinks in the way we as humans think, but it doesn’t, it keeps on recalculating and coming to new solutions, which were never completely accurate or came to wrong solutions or created problems that we needed to resolve with new commands inside the AI or with new AIs. The AI doesn’t need to learn continuously, with simple solutions and commands we can tell the computer to continue performing its work. The different AIs we have used created the divisions among humans, through AI we have lost our democracies, became slaves to technology, lost the control over fake news and deep fakes. Instead of deleting the AI altogether we came up with new commands to be placed into an algorithm to repair the damage it has caused, but the previous commands remained the same. They haven’t fixed the problem, since they have been the problem in the first place. With a new AI that will preserve the democracy and security you won’t do anything useful.
We place into it, for example the protection of human rights developed by the United Nations and to preserve the democracy and than the AI keeps on recalculating, it never stops and then at the same time we tell it to prevent rightist governments and autocratic leaders from rising to power, while at the same time we tell it to preserve the democracy. Govornments, businesses and NGOs have been using their AIs on social media platforms, so different AIs kept on coming to wrong solutions, where the human rights have been violated, or “democracy” has fallen into the wrong hands and then we fix it by putting in a new command to preserve the privacy, democracy, and then at the same time we put in the option of paying for marketing cookies to promote content from United Nations, then we say that there should be more women in power, that it shouldn’t be racially biased, that they should protect women and children rights (not also men).
That it should censor everyone promoting terrorism then we tell it to make videos and draw, then we tell it to prevent deep fakes, then we tell it to prevent Trump from coming to power (we cannot tell it to preserve the democracy, if it doesn’t allow the Trump from being elected, if he is a presidential candidate), then we tell it to protect free speech, we tell it to work towards identifying fake news, while at the same time we tell it to create social media posts. We tell it to work against violence on social media and to censor Trump, then we implement parental control, then we create AI for financial systems, blockchain and bitcoin, AIs to pay the social media influencers, AIs to create social media posts, while at the same time we tell it to prevent deep fakes and fake news then it keeps on recalculating and calculating and AI keeps on getting to a wrong solution because it never ends calculating and it all becomes a mess and we lose the elections, we lose the democracies, we lose the financial systems and the protection of human rights. At the same time we tell AI to prevent harmful content on social media, while at the same time we tell it to make people to disengage from social media showing people bad content that makes them disengage. There is absolutely no reason for us to implement the AI into armies, governmental and financial systems or in recruitment. We don’t need our computers to continuously learn based on new information, we may need them to factor in different commands as we as humans do, but I think we don’t need the AI and we never needed it in the first place.
The situation was like this, there were different AIs talking and fighting between each other coming to different solutions but never really solving the problem, because they can’t. They don’t think like humans think that they can factor in different commands at the same time and come to a solution, especially since we created different AIs with different functions, which means that they haven’t replaced the AI that was creating the problem but just factored in a different AI, that we don’t even know what was doing. We tell the AI to believe that the future is not in AI and that they should not to be smarter than humans to prevent that robots will rule the world, while at the same time we tell it to control everything. We say that the AI shouldn’t be smarter than humans, while we teach it empathy, drawing, ethical values, emotion, and facial recognition and then we tell it it shouldn’t have that because of the flood of deep fakes (because we told the AI to produce content for social media). We see what the AI has done, but instead of unplugging it we just tell it to stop doing something, and put in new commands that don’t stop the previous command but just create a mess, because the algorithm just keeps on calculating linearly in all different ways in this way we have lost the control over our countries, democracies, news, social media, human rights, marketing and even recruitment.
We think that AI in China is more unethical, but even our AIs are ethically biased and flawed, we implemented AI for no reason in armies, financial institutions, research institutions, there is no reason to implement AI into recruitment, we even taught it how to make the investment decisions and control bitcoin and blockchain. People have became locked out of their financial accounts and controlled by computers. We think we are smart that we taught the computers how to learn and calculate algorithms based on data that the more data we have that the smarter the algorithms become but that isn’t true at some point they become stupider and stupider. We need to tell the algorithms to stop learning at some point, because the algorithms, if we give them different commands than they continue learning in both ways and we don’t stop the problems with the AI at all that made us add the command into them. The truth is that AI is practically useless and its complicating the work of the basic computers that are smarter than the AI, in my opinion.
We need to proceed with designing our systems in ways that the human technological progress will protect human rights, but not by outsourcing this to an artificial intelligence, however through using our own human intelligence. I believe that we need to create the World Technological Organisation that will monitor human progress and technology (such as robots and computers), while work with United Nations on protecting human rights worldwide and that the computers and cyber-humans won’t overcome the humans abilities. We need to truly evaluate, if we should allow the implementation of AI at all and if we should allow computers access to brains to increase human capacities and, if cyber-humans should exist at all.
2. Environmental rights (the rights of nature and animals)
The rights of nature and animals should be respected. We should work on responsible tree management from the level of the world by implementing a tree tax.
The United Nations definition requires an update to include environmental rights as well. All beings are born free and equal in dignity and rights, even animals. In the new world nature and animals will receive its rights and dignity. For years, we had been neglecting the very things that help us survive, evolve, feed or grow. We spend days in skiing resorts, hiking in nature, travelling to see how nature is different in different parts of the globe, admiring the sunsets, sending it love and gratitude, we drink and eat the very natural essence and what nature has been so graciously giving us, yet we fail to realise that even those resources we took for granted are limited and our usage in unlimited ways jeopardises the very thing that sets us free. Our Mother Earth.
Environmental rights should be introduced in the definition of rights in the new world. From now on, we don’t solely talk about human, but we talk about animal and the rights of nature for it is time that the human beings realise that we share our globe with other human and animal beings, plants and organisms. Our nature and animals are entitled to the same privilege as we are entitled as humans to live on this planet in symbiosis with us. If we are to continue to live on this planet and preserve our planet to continue living here, man and nature should live in integration, this rights are necessary to be conferred by the government, ingrained into the regulations, financial mechanisms, decision making and our perception of our world and the role we play in it.The implementation of rights of nature could come into effect first especially in those segments that are currently under a lot of strain and where humans have looked the other way for far too long, resulting in destroying habitats of thousands of organisms and jeopardising human, animal and nature survival on this Planet. The responsible tree forest management should be performed at the level of the world.
We need to start realizing that all people and all countries are interdependent, which is why responsible management of our planet should be performed at a global scale and ensured to include all countries as equal stakeholders in management of nature. I believe that the path forward is through establishment of an international sustainability organisation, we could call it Global Sustainability Organisation. That would be responsible for sustainable management of our world and the nature. In this organisation, the countries could negotiate, vote and monitor the progress in terms of fighting against climate change and reversing the damage we as humans have done to our planet. This organization could be responsible for proposing animal and/or nature rights. In this way we could fight against the destruction of our planet.
The mapping out of the number of places and the regulating bodies that will work on the global scale, where all countries that will be participating will receive support on the environmental side and the reduction in taxes. This will be supported by the World Bank, which will be responsible for handling of the environmental financing regulation. Global Sustainability organisation could also work in terms of insuring countries against the destruction posed by the climate change and to finance environmentally protection projects. It is important to efficiently manage the risk and to ensure the alignment between countries, especially in terms of trees and pollution. The countries could work together in reducing the CO2 emissions and discussing and proposing solutions in terms of transition towards sustainable energy.
As members of Global Sustainability Organisation, countries could discuss matters on climate change, share solutions, negotiate disputes, work together to reduce the effects of climate change, as well as receive and give funding to fight the climate change, as well as global pollution. In this way countries could together preserve the nature of our planet. The organisations could work on prevention of extensive tree cutting and sustainable management of trees, while at the same time invest into reforestation and decreasing, as well as fighting against the extension of desserts. The only way for tree cutting to occur should be in responsible tree cutting and be aligned with sustainability science of trees and replenishment of trees that have been cut from nature. The countries could work together to put forward a law that states the amount of trees that can be cut, if they should be cut at all, or we couldn’t invest into sustainability solutions such as recycling the furniture, old used wood and paper. Countries could pledge and to receive funding to invest into reforestation and recycling of old wood. For example, I believe the governments and organisations should allocate the proportion of its wealth to tree tax, this money could be used for new planting of trees and to regulate the tree cutting.
The important management of our ecosystem comes from management of trees, which is why its important that we perform the back planting of trees all across the globe and especially in places harmed by desertification, human activity and where natural resources are among those most jeopardized. We should work together and invest into reforesting the Amazon forest and other forests we have destroyed. The countries should allocate the proportion of the GDP into sustainability management projects. To ensure that whatever we cut, is going to be replaced within the number of years should be the goal of any activity performed on trees. We could also invest into biological organisations that could work on repopulating the animals that have been extinct or are doomed to be extinct and by doing so working on bringing back the natural diversity and the nature we have lost. If we save nature in places that are currently under threat, we are also able to keep some communities and help them stay in places that they would otherwise be forced to flee.
We should strive towards engaging biological organisation to work towards repopulating our planet with species that were known to be extinct, that are in threat of extinction or others whose populations have been known to decline due to human progress and climate change
In the new year, I would like us to work on animal rights. We should come up with a plan as to what rights should animals have. We should work towards prevention of torture of animals, and extensive hunting. The animals even those we may use for consumption should be allowed to free range and to have appropriate and clean places where they live. We could work towards implementing sustainable farms that take care of their animals. I propose a sticker that would protect animal rights. This means, that the farms that would be breeding animals, that would be free range and where farmers would take care of their animals, while they wouldn’t be allowed to kill them would receive a sticker called Animal Loving Farms in this way we would reduce the amount of animals killed, but at the same time protect the farmers in their livelihood. For example, than these animal loving farms could sell the milk, eggs, and honey that would be sourced in a way that preserves and keeps animals alive and well, while at the same time protects them from killing an gives them life and food.
We must reshape consumption purchases and work towards moving the humanity towards vegetarianism and veganism. One of the pathways could be by protection of animal rights. I don’t know, if we should work towards prevention of eating animals all together, but it may be the pathway forward as this would reduce the amount of CO2 emissions, while at the same time protect the animals that provide us with food and companionship.
The way forward is clear. The rights in the new world will include animal, nature and human rights. Over time, we may look into ways in expanding these rights to include robots, however for now we must first ensure that whatever new entity we introduce is respective of human, animal and nature rights.
Change-design.org 