Alston and Artificial Intelligence

Abstract This chapter analyses Philip Alston’s critical forays as UN Special Rapporteur in the field of technology and human rights. While AI and automation first emerged in his work on extrajudicial killings and basic income, his assault on the digital welfare state constitutes a full-scale engagement with the technology-inflected future of economic, social, and cultural (ESC) rights. In dystopic fashion, Alston depicts in enigmatic form the digital welfare state as a cover for long-standing neoliberal policies and a new vehicle for entrenching structural inequalities, poverty, and social control. These claims are subject to a close reading through the lens of critical empiricism. While Alston’s work is reflective of a growing and important dystopic literature, questions can be raised about its construction of technological imaginaries and its bright-line distinctions between emancipation and repression.