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	Hate Speech threatens Our Humanity by M. Nadarajah, Jomo Kwame Sundaram Inter Press Service   Do politicians’ words matter? Since becoming US President, Donald J Trump has dismissed his opponents and others he does not like as evil, stupid or both. He has referred to undocumented immigrants as animals, and to poor countries as shitholes.   Around the world, such harsh words have become normalized as part of the rhetoric of leaders, against perceived and manufactured enemies, to mobilize the intended ‘imagined community’ against ‘ the other’.   Such rhetoric, increasingly emulated by political, religious and community leaders the world over, has contributed greatly to the growing climate of resentment and hatred of the ‘other’, the ‘outsider’, the ‘stranger’.   Hate words and speech have become widespread globally. They have become part of dominant cultures, spreading meanings, worldviews and beliefs, all with considerable impact. When dominant, they are amplified by authority and power – political, economic, social, and cultural, increasingly recognised as ‘soft’ power.   The rhetoric of hatred has been echoed and thus amplified by traditional as well as social media, including the increasingly vicious culture online, as rivals compete to outdo one another, vying for attention.   But often, even more aggressive and vicious is the hate rhetoric of the rising cultural populists, as they manufacture new language to outdo one another and the incumbents, while trying to unify their ‘imagined communities’ behind them.   Cultural populism for imagined communities   Ethno-populists, jingoist nationalists, other chauvinists and their enablers try to convince their followers that they are victims facing threats from exaggerated or even imagined dangers, such as conspiracies by enemy ‘others’ of which they are ignorant due to obfuscation by fake news.   Around the world, they use cultural ignorance, unfamiliarity, suspicions, prejudices, animosity and fear-mongering to mobilize their followings, typically with ‘half-truths’, rather than less credible, outright fabrications.   In the era of fake news, fake alerts and ‘post-truth’, such half-truths have become more effective, and hence, more dangerous in abetting the power to demean, displace and destroy, especially when driven by ambition seeking greater influence and power.   The recent popularity, mainstreaming and legitimization of ethno-populism and jingoism in the West as well as other parts of the world, demand attention to how cultural analysis, social psychology and neuroscience can help us better understand the effects of such rhetoric.   Normalizing hate speech   Unsurprisingly, continuous or frequent exposure to hate speech is known to increase prejudice, resentment and animosity. Such influences desensitize people to verbal and even other forms of aggression, by ‘normalizing’ actions and behaviour which might otherwise be socially condemned. The culture of hate seems to thrive in the human ‘ecosystem’.   Leaders inspiring prejudice, anger and fear among their supporters, stimulate surges of stress hormones, such as norepinephrine and cortisol, affecting the amygdala, the brain centre for threat. Threatening language directly stimulates the amygdala, making it difficult for humans to ‘wind down’ their passions and emotions in order to ‘think’ before acting.   One does not have to be mentally defective or unstable to be ‘inspired’ to aggression and violence by such rhetoric. Most of us are susceptible to such ‘motivational’ speeches, especially when conditions are conducive.   Legitimizing violence against others   A study, led by Princeton psychologist Susan Fiske, has linked anger and violent impulses to distrust of ‘outsiders’ or ‘others’, especially when economic difficulties encourage viewing them as competing ‘unfairly’ for better opportunities.   By inducing or exaggerating a sense of external threat by the ‘other’, they can be thought of as not only different, but even as threatening. It is generally easier to think of outsiders as less than human, and hence, undeserving of empathy or compassion; both are cultural and socio-psychological conditions conducive to hate, aggression and violence.   A Harvard psychologist co-author of the study reportedly noted, “when a group is put on the defensive and made to feel threatened, they begin to believe that anything, including violence, is justified.”   Dehumanizing others   Cultural chauvinists also encourage antagonism to and violence against others by demonizing and dehumanizing them as sub-human or even non-human, so that they are not deemed worthy of treatment and consideration as fellow humans.   Earlier, Fiske and a colleague had found that their study subjects were so unempathetic to images of drug addicts and the homeless that they could not imagine how they felt or thought; the brain regions required to empathize with them as human beings deserving of ‘moral treatment’ could not be activated.   Instead, the brain region associated with feelings of disgust were activated. As Fiske has argued, “Both science and history suggest that people will nurture and act on their prejudices in the worst ways when these people are put under stress, pressured by peers, or receive approval from authority figures to do so.”   Thus, when a politician or some other socially influential person dehumanizes others, they are being put beyond the range of empathy, depriving them of moral protection and legitimizing inhuman treatment against them.   In another famous 1960s’ study by Yale psychologist Stanley Milgram, not knowing that the shocks were fake, most study subjects were willing to obey an authority figure’s instructions to give electric shocks to other participants.   Sixty-five per cent – almost two out of three — did as told, delivering the maximum shock, which could have been fatal, if real. Clearly, people can easily be influenced by authority to terribly harm others. Followers thus follow the leader in dehumanising others.   Positive agenda needed too   People are being continuously influenced by hate speech. But as dehumanisation becomes the norm, tolerated and sustained, not only by individual actions, but also by a socioeconomic culture promoting, even needing dehumanisation, then the culture of hatred, including hate speech, becomes normalized.   Hence, it is necessary to take measures to deter, delegitimize and even disallow hate speech in view of its likely consequences and the normalization of hate it thrives on and contributes to.   These threaten not only to undermine social solidarity, peaceful coexistence and mutual respect, but also to do far more damage, not only for international relations, but also for social peace, especially in multicultural societies.   As hate becomes part and parcel of our ‘way of life’, it becomes increasingly difficult to reverse these processes to recapture our lost ability to build reason, empathy and compassion.   While difficult but necessary, this is hardly sufficient as we revisit, mobilize and augment our remaining cultural resources for a positive agenda to rediscover the best in our common humanity, drawing on mutual respect and the universal ethos underlying our rich cultural diversity.   While the current culture of hate has a supportive ‘ecosystem’ of sorts in some aspects of neuroscience, human biology and social psychology also recognise our ‘compassion instinct’, an orientation of mind that recognises pain, the universality of pain and suffering, and the ‘instinctive’ need, indeed desire to help others.   * M. Nadarajah is Chair Professor, Xavier Centre for New Humanities and Compassion Studies, Xavier University, Bhubaneswar, Odisha, India. Jomo Kwame Sundaram, a former economics professor and United Nations Assistant Secretary-General, was a member of the new Malaysian Government’s Council of Eminent Persons. Visit the related web page
	In the era of artificial intelligence: safeguarding human rights by Dunja Mijatovic Council of Europe Commissioner for Human Rights   Today, it is all too easy for governments to permanently watch you and restrict the right to privacy, freedom of assembly, freedom of movement and press freedom.   Humans and machines are destined to live in an ever-closer relationship. To make it a happy marriage, we have to better address the ethical and legal implications that data science carry.   Artificial intelligence, and in particular its subfields of machine learning and deep learning, may only be neutral in appearance, if at all. Underneath the surface, it can become extremely personal.   The benefits of grounding decisions on mathematical calculations can be enormous in many sectors of life. However, relying too heavily on AI inherently involves determining patterns beyond these calculations and can therefore turn against users, perpetrate injustices and restrict people’s rights.   AI in fact can negatively affect a wide range of our human rights. The problem is compounded by the fact that decisions are taken on the basis of these systems, while there is no transparency, accountability and safeguards on how they are designed, how they work and how they may change over time.   Encroaching on the right to privacy and the right to equality   The tension between advantages of AI technology and risks for our human rights becomes most evident in the field of privacy. Privacy is a fundamental human right, essential in order to live in dignity and security. But in the digital environment, including when we use apps and social media platforms, large amounts of personal data is collected - with or without our knowledge - and can be used to profile us, and produce predictions of our behaviours. We provide data on our health, political ideas and family life without knowing who is going to use this data, for what purposes and why.   Machines function on the basis of what humans tell them. If a system is fed with human biases (conscious or unconscious) the result will inevitably be biased. The lack of diversity and inclusion in the design of AI systems is therefore a key concern: instead of making our decisions more objective, they could reinforce discrimination and prejudices by giving them an appearance of objectivity. There is increasing evidence that women, ethnic minorities, people with disabilities and LGBTI persons particularly suffer from discrimination by biased algorithms.   Studies have shown, for example, that Google was more likely to display adverts for highly paid jobs to male job seekers than female. Last May, a study by the EU Fundamental Rights Agency also highlighted how AI can amplify discrimination. When data-based decision making reflects societal prejudices, it reproduces – and even reinforces – the biases of that society. This problem has often been raised by academia and NGOs too, who recently adopted the Toronto Declaration, calling for safeguards to prevent machine learning systems from contributing to discriminatory practices.   Decisions made without questioning the results of a flawed algorithm can have serious repercussions for human beings. For example, software used to inform decisions about healthcare and disability benefits has wrongfully excluded people who were entitled to them, with dire consequences for the individuals concerned.   Stifling freedom of expression and freedom of assembly   Another right at stake is freedom of expression. A recent Council of Europe publication on Algorithms and Human Rights noted for instance that Facebook and YouTube have adopted a filtering mechanism to detect violent extremist content. However, no information is available about the process or criteria adopted to establish which videos show “clearly illegal content”.   Although one cannot but salute the initiative to stop the dissemination of such material, the lack of transparency around the content moderation raises concerns because it may be used to restrict legitimate free speech and to encroach on people’s ability to express themselves.   Similar concerns have been raised with regard to automatic filtering of user-generated content, at the point of upload, supposedly infringing intellectual property rights, which came to the forefront with the proposed Directive on Copyright of the EU. In certain circumstances, the use of automated technologies for the dissemination of content can also have a significant impact on the right to freedom of expression and of privacy, when bots, troll armies, targeted spam or ads are used, in addition to algorithms defining the display of content.   The tension between technology and human rights also manifests itself in the field of facial recognition. While this can be a powerful tool for law enforcement officials for finding suspected terrorists, it can also turn into a weapon to control people. Today, it is all too easy for governments to permanently watch you and restrict the right to privacy, freedom of assembly, freedom of movement and press freedom.   What governments and the private sector should do   AI has the potential to help human beings maximise their time, freedom and happiness. At the same time, it can lead us towards a dystopian society. Finding the right balance between technological development and human rights protection is therefore an urgent matter – one on which the future of the society we want to live in depends.   To get it right, we need stronger co-operation between state actors – governments, parliaments, the judiciary, law enforcement agencies – private companies, academia, NGOs, international organisations and also the public at large. The task is daunting, but not impossible.   A number of standards already exist and should serve as a starting point. For example, the case-law of the European Court of Human Rights sets clear boundaries for the respect for private life, liberty and security. It also underscores states’ obligations to provide an effective remedy to challenge intrusions into private life and to protect individuals from unlawful surveillance. In addition, the modernised Council of Europe Convention for the Protection of Individuals with regard to Automatic Processing of Personal Data adopted this year addresses the challenges to privacy resulting from the use of new information and communication technologies.   States should also make sure that the private sector, which bears the responsibility for AI design, programming and implementation, upholds human rights standards. The Council of Europe Recommendation on the roles and responsibilities of internet intermediaries, the UN guiding principles on business and human rights, and the report on content regulation by the UN Special Rapporteur on the promotion and protection of the right to freedom of opinion and expression, should all feed the efforts to develop AI technology which is able to improve our lives. There needs to be more transparency in the decision-making processes using algorithms, in order to understand the reasoning behind them, to ensure accountability and to be able to challenge these decisions in effective ways.   A third field of action should be to increase people’s “AI literacy”. States should invest more in public awareness and education initiatives to develop the competencies of all citizens, and in particular of the younger generations, to engage positively with AI technologies and better understand their implications for our lives. Finally, national human rights structures should be equipped to deal with new types of discriminations stemming from the use of AI.   Artificial intelligence can greatly enhance our abilities to live the life we desire. But it can also destroy them. We therefore have to adopt strict regulations to prevent it from morphing in a modern Frankenstein’s monster.   * Dunja Mijatovic is the Council of Europe Commissioner for Human Rights and former Organisation for Security and Co-operation in Europe representative on freedom of the media.   http://www.coe.int/en/web/commissioner/-/safeguarding-human-rights-in-the-era-of-artificial-intelligence http://en.unesco.org/courier/2018-3/ethical-risks-ai http://www.oii.ox.ac.uk/news/releases/new-report-reveals-growing-threat-of-organised-social-media-manipulation-world-wide/ http://www.stopkillerrobots.org/ http://futureoflife.org/lethal-autonomous-weapons-pledge/ http://bit.ly/2LwhKCM http://theconversation.com/chinas-dystopian-social-credit-system-is-a-harbinger-of-the-global-age-of-the-algorithm-88348 http://bit.ly/2Ljek7e http://nyti.ms/2ufnkiB Visit the related web page
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