Business prides itself on its ability to innovate. It is therefore the shared responsibility of new and established businesses to innovate to address the fresh issues societies face. Current frameworks are outdated and ineffective in the ‘millisecond’ world.
Technological advances have prompted the need for a new generation of rights to address discrimination through algorithms and their impact on freedom of speech and thought; to address potential discrimination between humans and machines; and to protect privacy in a world of radical unparallelled transparency.
New tech-first business models need to embed fundamental rights in their DNA. Instead of viewing themselves as simply a tech ‘platform’, they should work to incorporate fair wages and working conditions into the gig economy model from the get-go.
And in another very different case, a year or more ago, the New Zealand government granted legal ‘persona’ status to a river.
Policy-makers protected nature with a new set of rights – how could businesses or individuals support such a move?