Closing the Digital Divide

The digital divide is first and foremost threatening the right to equality and the freedom from discrimination, as well as the right to development. As AI and new technologies become more prevalent, disparities in access and digital literacy and skills could widen, exacerbating existing inequalities and limiting the enjoyment of human rights for marginalized populations.

The digital divide is a cause of division and reflects and amplifies inequalities, as it segregates in terms of:

-          the access to infrastructure, data and investment that are indispensable for the use of modern technologies and A.I.;

-          the use of these technologies, through variable levels of digital literacy and skills;

-          the different levels of quality of use (quality of the technologies, quality of the information and data available).

The digital divide comes in different disguises. It presents geographic, social and generational aspects. It creates and exacerbates differences between countries from the North and the South, between urban and rural areas, between rich and poor, young and old, and it is often gender based. And what may seem to be reason for hope through the access to new technologies and A.I. in one part of the world may very well be perceived as a risk through the absence thereof in other parts.

As such, the ever-deepening digital divide is a barrier to the equal enjoyment of i.a.:

-          the right to education,

-          the right to a clean, healthy and sustainable environment (climate change and global warming),

-          the right to desirable work,

-          the right to social security,

-          the right to seek, receive and impart information.

To bridge that digital divide or, at least to stop its constant widening, will take an extraordinary collective effort of many stakeholders, public and private, to share the benefits of the new technologies and A.I. and to jointly mitigate the risks of their misuse. Indeed, the danger of collective inaction is very high.

The ultimate, almost apocalyptic form of digital divide would oppose humankind, on the one side, and machines empowered by artificial general intelligence (AGI), on the other. Some argue that the danger inherent to the non-alignment of A.I. to the shared values and goals of humanity may well amount to a threat to the right to life, in case of the occurrence of a singularity, when technological progress and growth spring out of human control and turn against humanity itself and threaten human dignity. In order to prevent the realization of such a dark perspective, calls for containment and harnessing of potentially dangerous autonomous A.I. are getting louder.