The EU AI Act and the Rights-based Approach to Technological Governance

TL;DR

The paper analyzes the EU AI Act's integration of fundamental rights into AI governance, emphasizing its human-centric approach and potential as a rights-preserving model, while noting implementation challenges.

Contribution

It provides an in-depth examination of how the EU AI Act institutionalizes a rights-based approach to AI regulation and its implications for future governance.

Findings

The AI Act embeds fundamental rights as legal thresholds.

It promotes a human-centric, rights-preserving AI framework.

Implementation challenges are anticipated in operationalizing the Act.

Abstract

The EU AI Act constitutes an important development in shaping the Union's digital regulatory architecture. The Act places fundamental rights at the heart of a risk-based governance framework. The article examines how the AI Act institutionalises a human-centric approach to AI and how the AI Act's provisions explicitly and implicitly embed the protection of rights enshrined in the EU Charter of Fundamental Rights. It argues that fundamental rights function not merely as aspirational goals, but as legal thresholds and procedural triggers across the lifecycle of an AI system. The analysis suggests that the AI Act has the potential to serve as a model for rights-preserving AI systems, while acknowledging that challenges will emerge at the level of implementation.