Digital Dignity Institute

Our Research Areas

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The Digital Dignity Institute examines how emerging technologies affect human dignity across life, work, family, society, incapacity, death, and the digital afterlife.

AI Afterlife Ethics

Digital Resurrection & Posthumous Rights

AI Afterlife Ethics

We investigate the rights, consent, and accountability questions that arise when people are digitally recreated, represented, or made interactive after death.

We examine the use of human voices, likenesses, personalities, memories, creative works, and behavioural data to create AI-generated counterparts, avatars, digital twins, and interactive representations.

Our work considers who may create, control, authorize, modify, commercialize, or speak through these systems — and what protections people need when an artificial representation can convincingly appear to act as them.

This includes the future of personal data, AI assistants, autonomous agents, digital twins, chat histories, creative archives, voice models, and other intelligent systems that may remain active after a person is gone.

Our work advances governance frameworks that preserve human agency across incapacity, death, and digital afterlife — and begins from the principle that silence is not consent.

Key Questions We Address

Who has the right to create a digital replica of a deceased person?

What consent frameworks should govern posthumous AI representations?

How should platforms handle the digital remains of their users?

What protections exist for families when AI recreates a loved one?

Research on this topic

Latest publications

Security & Society

Surveillance & Human Autonomy

Security & Society

We examine the impact of automated observation, prediction, profiling, and decision-making on privacy, freedom, equality, and democratic participation.

Our work considers how AI surveillance is deployed by governments, employers, platforms, schools, and commercial actors — and how individuals and communities can retain meaningful control over how they are monitored, categorized, influenced, and judged.

We examine synthetic identity — the creation of convincing but false digital personas — and its implications for trust, security, and civil society.

From facial recognition to predictive policing, from workplace monitoring to social credit systems, we develop frameworks for accountability and human rights protection in an age of pervasive AI surveillance.

Key Questions We Address

How does AI surveillance erode democratic participation and civil liberties?

What governance frameworks can constrain automated profiling?

How should synthetic identity be regulated to protect individuals?

What rights do people have over how AI systems categorize them?

Research on this topic

Latest publications

Work & Family

AI in Everyday Life

Work & Family

We investigate how AI is reshaping employment, education, parenting, consumption, and everyday life.

Our research examines where commercial claims outpace technical reality, how automation changes work before it fully replaces jobs, how AI intensifies targeted advertising and behavioural manipulation, and how children encounter systems they may not yet be equipped to understand.

We distinguish demonstrated capabilities from corporate narratives and examine who benefits, who bears the risks, and which social protections are required as AI becomes embedded in daily life.

From AI companions and autonomous agents in the home to algorithmic management in the workplace, we develop frameworks that centre human dignity, informed consent, and equitable access.

Key Questions We Address

How does algorithmic management affect worker dignity and autonomy?

What protections do children need from AI-driven behavioural systems?

How should AI companions and caregiving robots be governed?

What social protections are required as AI reshapes employment?

Research on this topic

Latest publications

Governance

Autonomous Systems & Policy

Governance

We develop approaches for ensuring that increasingly agentic technologies remain transparent, accountable, contestable, and subject to meaningful human control.

As AI systems gain the ability to act, communicate, make decisions, and carry out tasks with reduced supervision, governance must extend beyond what these systems can do to address who remains responsible for their actions.

We produce principled policy frameworks, legislative commentary, and practical regulatory guidance for governments, institutions, and technology companies navigating the governance of AI.

Through international conferences, expert roundtables, and collaborative publications, we create spaces where emerging questions can be examined before harmful practices become normalized or entrenched.

Our convenings generate practical policy recommendations, interdisciplinary publications, shared principles, and public declarations capable of guiding institutions and shaping global debate.

Key Questions We Address

Who is responsible when an autonomous AI agent causes harm?

How should international AI governance frameworks be structured?

What accountability mechanisms are needed for agentic AI systems?

How can democratic institutions keep pace with AI development?

Research on this topic

Latest publications