AI Deathmatch: Human Rights

AI Deathmatch: Human Rights – Yea or Nay?

Human rights put to the test by AI: an experiment at the Urania

Do we still need the Universal Declaration of Human Rights? From mid-November, four AI systems will argue this question in the foyer of the Urania Berlin. The debate runs live until 10 December, Human Rights Day. Visitors can follow it at an installation during opening hours.

The starting point is something often described but still hard to grasp: we are increasingly leaving decisions to AI that shape our lives and that we ought to make ourselves. The Urania has turned this into a deliberately provocative experiment. It acts as if the validity of human rights could be settled by counting arguments.

That category error is the whole point. Whether a norm is justified, whether people accept it and whether it is valid are three different questions.
More questions follow from them.

Are there principles that should never be up for negotiation in the first place?
Is putting them up for debate already a form of erosion?
And what does it mean that AI systems are already helping to decide on fundamental rights today?

Four perspectives on one result

On the evening of 10 December, once the AI debate has reached its result, it will be people’s turn to make sense of it. Simone Baer, Aljoscha Burchardt, Mirko Ross, founder and CEO of asvin, Roberto Simanowski and other guests will discuss it from sociological, philosophical, constitutional and technical perspectives.

The event AI Deathmatch: Human Rights – Yea or Nay?
takes place on Thursday, 10 December 2026, at 7.30 pm in the Kleist-Saal at the Urania Berlin.