Human Rights and Artificial Intelligence in Healthcare-Related Settings: A Grammar of Human Rights Approach

This article examines the expanding role of Artificial Intelligence (AI) in healthcare and associated human rights concerns, including whether new EU legislation takes all relevant human rights concerns into account. AI presents promising ways to fulfil the right to health through improving diagnostics, treatments, and resource allocation, but its use also comes with risks concerning privacy, bias, discrimination, and human dignity. Existing literature often relies on the rather vague FATE (Fairness, Accountability, Transparency, Ethics) principles, but recent calls have been made for a human-rights-based approach more broadly to ensure the legality and ethics of AI applications. This article responds to that call by proposing a structured methodology for reconciling rights, considering both the different structures of civil and political versus economic, social and cultural human rights, the negative and positive obligations of the state, and the interplay with different AI design choices.