Climate Change and Digitization: the Role of AI from a "Rights-based" Perspective

This essay intends to focus on the role of Artificial Intelligence in relation to climate change and, specifically, on the potential advantages that derive from a soft-ethics approach in the use of techno-scientific devices within the struggle against climate change. The article will delve into the dimension of interaction between a scientific and interdisciplinary understanding of climate instability and a conception of this phenomenon – in the framework of the theoretical legal discourse – grounded on a “rights-based” approach. Therefore, the text aims to highlight how the fight against climate change from the point of view of the violation of a relevant subjective legal situation conceptualized as the “right to the climate” – and the rights connected to it – can constitute a prerequisite for policy choices aimed at the enhancement of the social value of AI. In this direction, the contribution tries to reinforce suggestions that a bioethical reading of AI in relation to climate change lads to a specific philosophical and legal reflection, in particular with regard to the possibility of a transition from a vision based on “climate law” as a goal to the central objective of the protection of subjective rights.