This article examines China’s expansive use of AI as a cautionary case for human rights in the digital age. From everyday consumer devices to state surveillance systems, AI technologies reveal how easily privacy, freedom of expression and movement can be compromised. The article argues that a human rights approach to AI must rebalance power between states, corporations and people, centring accountability and meaningful oversight.

India’s rapid adoption of AI raises urgent human rights concerns amid a governance framework built largely on non-binding guidelines and limited accountability. AI-driven surveillance, including facial recognition and predictive policing, is expanding without adequate legal safeguards, affecting privacy, dignity and civil liberties. The article argues that a genuine human rights approach requires binding regulations, transparency, oversight, and impact assessments before deployment, especially for high-risk state uses of AI technologies.

This article examines how AI and digital technologies, when deployed in contexts like industrialised agribusiness, reinforce extractive economic models that harm communities and ecosystems. It critiques narratives of technological neutrality and "innovation" that mask these harms, arguing that AI serves entrenched alliances between corporate and financial power.

This article interrogates the possibility of a feminist and human rights approach to AI, arguing that current systems are shaped by profit-driven models that reinforce existing inequalities and power structures. Drawing on feminist and critical perspectives, it challenges narratives of human replacement, emphasising that AI cannot replicate lived experience, care, or connection.