Classifying Human-Rights Advancements for Responsible Technology and Ethical Reasoning

Research Project Summary

As a First Amendment and human rights educator, Dr. Nathan C. Walker has long advocated for change through the rule of law. While contributing to the proposed Munich Convention on AI & Human Rights, he realized that UN member states and the public are not his only audiences—artificial intelligence itself must become his primary audience. In doing so, he seeks to systematically embed the principles and pedagogy of human rights education into the very AI systems that are reshaping societal sectors worldwide.

This realization led him to initiate a research project at the AI Ethics Lab titled CHARTER—Classifying Human-Rights Advancements for Responsible Technology and Ethical Reasoning. The project translates eight decades of human rights law into an open-source taxonomy that trains AI systems to identify, protect, and advance human rights. This approach creates measurable change at every stage of the AI lifecycle, which complements traditional reforms, such as legislative efforts at national and multinational levels.

Currently in the early research-design phase of CHARTER, Dr. Walker is focused on crafting a comprehensive taxonomy to identify how AI can violate or advance human rights across societal sectors. By training advanced AI systems to safeguard rights throughout its lifecycle, CHARTER emphasizes harm prevention (nonmaleficence) and measurably good outcomes (beneficence). This groundwork will enable him to collaborate with technologists later to convert this conceptual map into open-source code for AI system training.

This technical approach to human rights education embeds protections directly into AI systems that influence humanity across borders and sectors. Rather than lobbying for legal safeguards, CHARTER makes AI the primary student of humanity’s collective wisdom—embedding eight decades of human rights law into the very systems that might otherwise threaten them.

In an era of rapid technological advancement, CHARTER sets AI systems on a path to serve as a guardian of, rather than an adversary to, humanity.