Dual Roles and Rights Implications : The Unsettled Dynamics of AI Use in Relation to Minoritised Communities

Abstract

The exponential growth of artificial intelligence (AI) tools has generated a series of new challenges and opportunities in which algorithmic systems irrevocably influence the social, political, and cultural dimensions of human life, including the lives of minority and indigenous communities. AI’s growing integration into state and private decision-making processes and policy implementation practices demands a reassessment of how these systems interact with the rights of minoritised communities. While AI’s transformative and disruptive potential is heavily discussed in areas such as healthcare or education,1 its implications for equality and minority protection remain inadequately examined. This study, therefore, situates AI within the narrower framework of the human rights of minorities, focusing on those groups whose social, linguistic, or cultural identities have historically rendered them vulnerable to systemic exclusion. The paper’s core proposition is that AI operates in a dual normative capacity. It can both entrench discrimination and serve as a catalyst for cultural empowerment, depending on the frameworks of human agency and policy oversight in place.