Research work · 2023
Artificial Intelligence and the Right to Food
Adekemi Omotubora
Artificial Intelligence and Human Rights
Abstract
Abstract The challenge of reducing hunger has persisted despite the right to food being enshrined in international and regional instruments and national laws and policies. The International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights (ICESCR), the primary instrument guaranteeing the right to food provides that states parties must take measures, including technical and scientific methods, to improve food production and distribution towards realising the right to food. This chapter examines the potential of artificial intelligence (AI) for agriculture, food security, and sustainability. It uses the ‘smart farm system’ to examine how AI can increase food production and enhance food quality and supply chains. The chapter expounds the normative content and scope of the right to food under the ICESCR. It argues that the extensive framework on the right to food has not translated into the full realisation of the right. Rather natural, environmental, and social factors continue to limit its realisation. While technological interventions in the form of smart farm systems are imperative to boosting food production and distribution, they also raise critical concerns around food and systemic inequality and could create conflicts between competing rights such as the rights to privacy and work. The chapter concludes with proposals on how governments can strike the correct balance between implementing the right to food, promoting AI innovations in agriculture, and protecting other fundamental rights.