NESC Visits Strasbourg for Conference on Our “Algorithmic Age”

• 16 April 2026
• Topics: Social
• Types: News

On Wednesday, April 15 the Council of Europe held a Conference in Strasbourg on the “Algorithmic Age” seeking to explore how new and emerging digital technologies operate in real social, institutional, and legal contexts, and what this means for human rights, democracy, and the rule of law. Dr Siobhán O’Sullivan, senior policy advisor with NESC, was an invited speaker and discussed the implications of digital technologies, and AI in particular, for human dignity, autonomy, and privacy.

Siobhán told the conference that digital technologies have the potential to expand the reach of human rights in terms of access to justice, freedom of expression, education, and participation in public life. Equally, she pointed out, these very rights can be eroded by emerging digital technologies if platforms, algorithms, or surveillance infrastructures operate outside accountability frameworks.

Siobhán also touched on how digital technologies do not, in themselves, raise categorically new ethical questions. The challenge is to build governance architectures capable of giving existing rights, such as dignity, autonomy, equity, and privacy, practical effect under conditions of rapid change, systemic opacity, and jurisdictional complexity. How digital technologies develop, who benefits, what harms arise, and how effectively they are managed will depend not only on the technology but on the governance, institutional capacity, and societal choices brought to bear on it, she argued.

Siobhán summed up by saying that a coherent and agile governance framework, one that specifically places human rights at its centre, should not be seen as a constraint on technological development but rather the foundation for it. It can provide the stable regulatory environment that investment requires, while also addressing public trust, which is a fundamental precondition for technological progress.

Find out more about NESC’s work on AI and digital technologies here.