Making Human

An International Relations scholar examines the processes by which formerly denigrated peoples become recognized as human beings worthy of rights and dignity

How do you keep your employees engaged, creative, innovative, and productive? Simple: Work human! From the pioneers of the management strategy that’s transforming businesses worldwide, Making Work Human shows how to implement a culture of performance and gratitude in the workplace—and seize a competitive edge, increase profitability, and drive business momentum. Leaders of Workhuman, the world’s fastest-growing social recognition and continuous performance management platform, Eric Mosley and Derek Irvine use game-changing data analytics to prove that when a workplace becomes more “human”—when it’s fueled by a culture of gratitude—measurable business results follow. In Making Work Human, they show you how to: Apply analytics and artificial intelligence in ways that make work more human, not less Expand equity, diversity, and inclusion initiatives and strategies to include a wider range of backgrounds, life experiences, and capabilities Use recognition as an actionable strategy to create a truly inclusive, connected culture “The qualities that make us most human—connection, community, positivity, belonging, and a sense of meaning—have become the corporate fuel for getting things done—for innovating, for thriving in the global marketplace, and for outperforming the competition,” the authors write. By building a sense of belonging, purpose, meaning, happiness, and energy in every employee, you’ll create a profound connection between your organization and its goals. And Making Work Human provides everything you need to get there.

Human rights have become a defining feature of contemporary society, permeating public discourse on politics, law and culture. But why did human rights emerge as a key social force in our time and what is the relationship between rights and the structures of both national and international society? By highlighting the institutional and socio-cultural context of human rights, this timely and thought-provoking collection provides illuminating insights into the emergence and contemporary societal significance of human rights. Drawn from both sides of the Atlantic and adhering to refreshingly different theoretical orientations, the contributors to this volume show how sociology can develop our understanding of human rights and how the emergence of human rights relates to classical sociological questions such as social change, modernisation or state formation. Making Human Rights Intelligible provides an important sociological account of the development of international human rights. It will be of interest to human rights scholars and sociologists of law and anyone wishing to deepen their understanding of one of the most significant issues of our time.

The most important characteristics of human rights are enumerated in a clear and concise discussion that analyzes the problem of making human rights real, not just hypothetical, worldwide. Building on definitions of human rights used by the United Nations and other international bodies, and without being sidetracked by nettlesome discussions of specific troubling cases of rights abuses, the author describes the main characteristics of the system of human rights. He focuses on universality, interdependence, differences between types of rights, absolute or limited rights, the subjects of rights (individuals or groups) and the links between rights and the judicial system and between rights and democracy. He then discusses some of the instruments we can use to promote respect for human rights, the means by which we might make these rights real for a greater portion of humanity. Along the way, he analyzes some of the related controversies regarding sovereignty versus international intervention, globalization and questions of cultural imperialism as they bear upon human rights. When do we have a right to impose rights or to defend ourselves from intervention? This systematic discussion presents a complex and difficult topic in an understandable framework accessible to the general public, and will stand as a useful foundation for readings of more specialized scientific, legal and philosophical works. Where most human rights books for the nonspecialist focus on specific instances of rights abuses, this work provides a more general approach focused on the logic in the system of human rights.

With the growing capabilities of artificial intelligence, governments are integrating AI technologies into administrative and even judicial decision-making, aiding and in some cases even replacing human decision-makers. Predictive policing, automated benefits administration, and automated risk assessment in criminal sentencing are but a few prominent examples of a general trend. While the turn towards governmental automated decision-making promises to reduce the impact of human biases and produce efficiency gains, reducing the human element in governmental decision-making also entails significant risks. This book analyses these risks through a comparative constitutional law and human rights lens, examining US law, German law, and international human rights law. It also highlights the structural challenges that automation poses for legal systems built on the assumption of exclusively human decision-making. Special attention is paid to the question whether existing law can adequately address the lack of transparency in governmental automated decision-making, its discriminatory processes and outcomes, as well as its fundamental challenge to human agency. Building on that analysis, it proposes a path towards securing the values of human dignity and agency at the heart of democratic societies and the rule of law in an increasingly automated world. This book will be of interest to researchers and scholars focusing on the evolving relationship of law and technology as well as human rights scholars. Further, it represents a valuable contribution to the debate on the regulation of artificial intelligence and the role human rights can play in that process.

This book provides an overview of recent research developments in the automation and control of robotic systems that collaborate with humans. A measure of human collaboration being necessary for the optimal operation of any robotic system, the contributors exploit a broad selection of such systems to demonstrate the importance of the subject, particularly where the environment is prone to uncertainty or complexity. They show how such human strengths as high-level decision-making, flexibility, and dexterity can be combined with robotic precision, and ability to perform task repetitively or in a dangerous environment. The book focuses on quantitative methods and control design for guaranteed robot performance and balanced human experience from both physical human-robot interaction and social human-robot interaction. Its contributions develop and expand upon material presented at various international conferences. They are organized into three parts covering: one-human–one-robot collaboration; one-human–multiple-robot collaboration; and human–swarm collaboration. Individual topic areas include resource optimization (human and robotic), safety in collaboration, human trust in robot and decision-making when collaborating with robots, abstraction of swarm systems to make them suitable for human control, modeling and control of internal force interactions for collaborative manipulation, and the sharing of control between human and automated systems, etc. Control and decision-making algorithms feature prominently in the text, importantly within the context of human factors and the constraints they impose. Applications such as assistive technology, driverless vehicles, cooperative mobile robots, manufacturing robots and swarm robots are considered. Illustrative figures and tables are provided throughout the book. Researchers and students working in controls, and the interaction of humans and robots will learn new methods for human–robot collaboration from this book and will find the cutting edge of the subject described in depth.

Human decision-making often transcends our formal models of "rationality." Designing intelligent agents that interact proficiently with people necessitates the modeling of human behavior and the prediction of their decisions. In this book, we explore the task of automatically predicting human decision-making and its use in designing intelligent human-aware automated computer systems of varying natures—from purely conflicting interaction settings (e.g., security and games) to fully cooperative interaction settings (e.g., autonomous driving and personal robotic assistants). We explore the techniques, algorithms, and empirical methodologies for meeting the challenges that arise from the above tasks and illustrate major benefits from the use of these computational solutions in real-world application domains such as security, negotiations, argumentative interactions, voting systems, autonomous driving, and games. The book presents both the traditional and classical methods as well as the most recent and cutting edge advances, providing the reader with a panorama of the challenges and solutions in predicting human decision-making.

This report is based on the seminar “Human biomonitoring (HBM) as a tool in policy making towards consumer safety” directed towards professionals involved in HBM programs, legislators and other policy-makers, risk assessors as well as researchers from universities and other higher educational institutions. It was organized by the Swedish National Food Agency in collaboration with the Norwegian Food Safety Authority, the Norwegian Institute of Public Health, the University of Iceland, and Karolinska Institute, Sweden. Experts from Europe, USA, and Canada within the field of HBM participated. It was agreed that HBM provides a powerful tool in policy making towards consumer safety. It was also concluded that there is interest to develop the Nordic collaborative efforts within the area of HBM and that there would, unquestionably, be benefits from this in terms of harmonization.