Thanks to the rapid and powerful development of modern technologies, which is often called the “fourth industrial revolution”, great changes have taken place in the overall socio-political relations and in people’s daily lives. From the point of view of respect for human rights, these changes have brought not only progress, but also new challenges, while tools for the protection of human rights, in the new digital age, are novel to society and individuals, said Commissioner for the Protection of Equality Brankica Janković at the conference. “Human Rights in the Digital Age.”

It can often be heard that the Internet poses a major challenge for hierarchical structures – social, economic or political, but while this is true, we must not overlook that the existing imbalance of power and systemic inequality lead to the fact that many technological innovations, such as diverse internet platforms and artificial intelligence systems, contribute to the existing gap or even widen it, the Commissioner pointed out.

On the other hand, artificial intelligence systems today are also part of the control mechanisms for the elimination of hate speech from social networks and the Internet in general. We cannot expect that the algorithms will be enough to eliminate hate speech, but it is already clear that they represent a valuable tool and help in this process, the Commissioner concluded.

The conference “Human Rights in the Digital Age” was organized by the Ministry of Human and Minority Rights and Social Dialogue in cooperation with Color Media Communications.