The U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights has warned of the risks artificial intelligence poses to human rights and urged governments and companies to adopt urgent control measures.

Concerns cited include large-scale surveillance, discriminatory outcomes and a chilling of free expression, with a growing number of cases in which automated decisions directly affect individual rights.

The human rights office has argued that human rights impact assessments should sit between development and deployment, on the reasoning that after-the-fact regulation alone cannot repair harm.

It was also argued that corporate self-regulation is insufficient and that binding standards and independent auditing are required.

On the other side, the counterargument that regulation slows technological progress continues. The gap between national industrial policy and human rights standards has yet to narrow.

Korea and Taiwan are both working on related legislation, with personal data processing and duties to explain automated decisions treated as common issues.

This paper plans to track actual cases of application rather than relay the for-and-against framing. Whether public agencies disclose their use of algorithms is a verifiable indicator.