Publications
To date, neither companies nor states have yet developed a comprehensive and systematic understanding of the human rights impacts of artificial intelligence (AI), but it is clear that the impact of AI on human rights is transnational, which requires a principled but adaptable regime to meet the challenges of new technology in a rapidly changing landscape. This chapter explains that when the United Nations Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights (UNGPs) were adopted in 2011, they formally recognised corporate responsibilities for human rights and imposed an obligation on businesses to do no harm. The chapter sets out this framework and examines key domestic legislative developments in light of the UNGPs. The question how these standards apply to AI is considered, including specific challenges presented by business models and development processes. This chapter introduces the reader to how a human rights-centric approach relates to AI, especially the ‘human rights due diligence’ processes, as advanced by the UNGPs, which can encourage technology companies to adapt their AI operations to respect human rights.
The term modern slavery has become part of common discourse in the last few years, attributable in large part to the enactment of the Modern Slavery Act 2015 (UK) and its Australian counterpart, the Modern Slavery Act 2018 (Cth). These Acts define modern slavery, for which they are both named, by reference to specific categories of criminal offences. But the term is actually rooted in advocacy and developed organically to encompass a range of issues, which have proven difficult to pin down in practice. Many practitioners suggest that it is impossible to draw hard lines: the dynamic and fluid nature of the term in advocacy runs against the certainty required of definitions in law. Until now, few people have questioned how the term has functioned in the legal context, yet there are important questions to be asked. What are the tensions between the Acts' strict legal categories and modern slavery's supposedly dynamic nature? How can these tensions be resolved? Is there a better way to understand modern slavery that would not only allow the law to function efficiently but also recognise the informality, poverty, and exploitation at modern slavery's core?
What can be learned from a detailed reading of the statements made by firms in response to Section 54 of the UK’s Modern Slavery Act 2015? This paper presents an in-depth analysis of the development of the statements over time for two large companies in different sectors and with contrasting characteristics. We show that the statements progress in sophistication over time, but have serious limitations. We demonstrate that although they present interesting information about the management of working conditions in the firms’ supply chains, they do little to address the problems of modern slavery per se. Furthermore, we show that the statements can contrast strongly with other documents published by the firm, and with established patterns of business practice. For both firms, we show that a deep understanding of the context of the organization is essential for interpreting the statements – but this contextual information is unlikely to be available to the casual reader. We conclude that the statements, as they are currently specified may in fact provide a way of deflecting the engagement of Civil Society Organisations, in a way not envisaged in the formulation of the Act. This paper is an extended version of a section of the report Hsin, L., New, S.J., Pietropaoli, I. and Smit, L. (2021). Accountability, Monitoring and the Effectiveness of Section 54 of the Modern Slavery Act: Evidence and Comparative Analysis. London: Modern Slavery Policy and Evidence Centre, providing greater detail than was possible to include in that report