Refugee protection in the artificial intelligence era: a test case for rights

Abstract

- Government and private sector interest in artificial intelligence (AI) for border security and for use in asylum and immigration systems is growing. Academics and civil society are calling for greater scrutiny of legal, technological and policy developments in this area. However, compared to other high-risk environments for AI, this sector has received little policy attention. - Whether governments can adopt AI and meet human rights obligations in asylum and immigration contexts is in doubt, particularly as states have specific responsibilities towards persons seeking refugee and humanitarian protection at national borders. - The risks include potentially significant harm if AI systems lead (or contribute) to asylum seekers being incorrectly returned to their country of origin or an unsafe country where they may suffer persecution or serious human rights abuses – a practice known as ‘refoulement’. The use of AI in asylum contexts also raises questions of fairness and due process. - Some reasons for optimism include recent efforts at responsible innovation. This involves governments focusing their efforts to deploy AI in parts of asylum and related decision-making processes deemed less likely to create tension with domestic and international legal principles. - However, the restrictive and changeable nature of refugee and immigration policy in many countries today, as well as systemic challenges around fairness and access to rights, creates significant obstacles to human rights-compliant AI. It also creates significant obstacles to community and private sector participation in responsible and collaborative AI development. - Emerging AI principles and safeguards (e.g. human control, transparency, algorithmic impact assessments) that build on good governance principles will be relevant to future development of systems and policies, but general principles need to be tailored to the asylum context, drawing on legal standards designed to guard against outcomes that produce serious human rights consequences. - Particular attention must be paid at national and regional level to how AI tools can support human rights-based decision-making in complex and politicized systems without exacerbating existing structural challenges. How we treat asylum seekers and refugees interacting with AI will be a test case for emerging domestic and regional legislation and governance of AI. Global standard-setting exercises for AI – including UN-based technical standards and high-level multinational initiatives – will also influence the direction of travel.

Derechos fundamentales e inteligencia artificial emocional en iBorderCtrl

“…Por lo tanto, debería aclararse el alcance del uso de la IA; y, como aboga European Digital Rights, ampliarse el listado de prácticas prohibidas, de forma que quede vetado cualquier uso de la IA que menoscabe el derecho a solicitar y obtener asilo, así como otras formas de permiso de residencia; y garantizar la autonomía e independencia de la capacidad decisional humana en estos ámbitos. En particular, como se ha adelantado anteriormente, la propuesta hace posible el uso de sistemas de "inteligencia artificial emocional" (Forster, 2022), parecidos al programa iBorderCtrl, al admitir el uso de "polígrafos [o detector de mentiras] y herramientas similares, [...] para detectar el estado emocional de una persona física" (Anexo III, art. 7, a).…”

“…3 Ahora bien, la observación de las recientes iniciativas adoptadas en el seno de la UE revela que nos encontramos ante una nueva fase de dicho proceso, caracterizada por el creciente interés en los sistemas de inteligencia artificial (IA) para el control fronterizo, la migración y el asilo. 4 Esto conlleva la introducción, en una pluralidad de procedimientos administrativos, de mecanismos automatizados basados en algoritmos capaces de apoyar o hasta remplazar la toma de decisiones por parte del ser humano (Leese et al, 2022): 5 a modo de ejemplo, las acciones más recientes emprendidas fuera y dentro de la UE comprenden la aplicación de la IA en los controles fronterizos, 6 el examen de las solicitudes de visados 7 e incluso la protección internacional (Jasmontaite-Zaniewicz y Zomignani Barboza, 2021;Forster, 2022;Ahmad, 2021). 8 En particular, dentro de estas iniciativas destaca la existencia de un tipo de sistema de IA que se dirige al reconocimiento de emociones (emotion recognition) destinado a categorizar a las personas sobre la base de 1 Agradezco a Augusto Aguilar Calahorro, Juan Francisco Sánchez Barrilao, Jorge Agustín Viguri Cordero y a los revisores anónimos por sus comentarios acertados y constructivos que me han permitido realizar una mejora substancial del texto.…”