Human dignity in the age of Artificial Intelligence: an overview of legal issues and regulatory regimes

Artificial Intelligence (‘AI’), as a science and technology, is undergoing exponential growth. Its anticipated ubiquity, lack of transparency and accountability raise the question of how AI should be regulated to advance its capabilities consistently with respect to human dignity. Contributing to the emerging scholarship on digital constitutionalism, this article discusses how the unregulated development and (mis)use of AI can potentially impact human dignity. This article proceeds from the particular to the general, first recalling the Italian experience with the Chat Generative Pre-Trained Transformer, a specific application of the generative AI foundational model. Then, it appraises the European Union’s (‘EU’) form of digital constitutionalism. Further, the article discusses how the EU has embraced a balanced legal humanism approach in developing a sustainable AI ecosystem. This approach prioritises protecting human dignity from AI technology violations, rather than solely promoting innovation or hindering development to safeguard fundamental rights and democratic values. Finally, the article conclusively considers whether Western democracies should adopt a balanced approach to mitigate the limitations and potential threats of ‘technological determinism’, which might gradually undermine the unique and inalienable moral status of primacy enjoyed by human beings in the civil, political, economic and social arenas.Footnote11 High-Level Expert Group on Artificial Challenge, ‘Ethics Guidelines for Trustworthy AI’ (8 April 2019) .