Attention as a human right

We are living through an era in which attention has become one of the most contested parts of human life. It is pulled by notifications, feeds, advertisements, automated calls, and systems designed to keep us looking, clicking, and responding.

Artificial intelligence did not create this struggle. But it has made it easier to intensify, automate, and widen its reach. That is what makes it worth paying attention to now: not only because AI can generate more content, but because it can do so with greater speed, precision, and persistence than before.

A swarm of daily robocalls has become part of the background noise of contemporary life. They come and go in bursts, sometimes disappearing for a while and then returning with annoying regularity, often at exactly the wrong time: during work, on a Sunday morning, or in the evening when you are trying to unwind. They are a small but telling sign of how easily our attention can be interrupted once it becomes available for automation.

Those moments are trivial and familiar. They are also a small example of how our attention is being treated as raw material that anyone may tap, at any time, as long as they can automate the interruption. Artificial intelligence tools have made these intrusions cheaper and easier to implement than ever before.

Old incentives, new machinery

Advertising, mass media, mobile phones, and social platforms have all been built around the ability to seize and hold attention for as long as possible. Cold calls, spam emails, and clickbait headlines existed long before machine learning entered the scene.

What has changed is the capacity and precision of these efforts. AI systems allow one person, or one company, to produce thousands of personalised messages, calls, or posts at minimal cost. Synthetic voices can sound friendly and convincing. Scams and loan offers can be tailored to each recipient’s language, location, and habits. Floods of low-quality content become easier to generate than a single careful paragraph.

In other words, the incentive to capture attention has stayed largely the same, while the tools to pursue it have become far more powerful.

The thinning of inner life

Attention is often discussed as if it were a productivity resource. We track it with timers, optimise it with apps, and complain about distractions because they slow us down. These concerns matter, but they miss something deeper.

Attention shapes our inner life. It is the precondition for sustained thought, reflection, and the slow work of making sense of experience. To read a demanding text, to follow a complex argument, to sit in silence and consider a difficult choice, we need stretches of time in which nothing pulls us away.

When interruptions multiply, the first casualty is not only efficiency. What suffers is depth. The constant readiness to respond to a notification or a ring trains the mind to hover near the surface of things. It becomes harder to stay with a thought long enough for it to reveal something new.

AI-enhanced intrusions, such as personalised robocalls, real-time-adapting recommendation systems, and persuasive interfaces that always offer ‘one more’ suggestion, accelerate this erosion. They take an existing pattern and press it further, until undisturbed attention begins to feel like a luxury rather than a normal condition of human life.

Public conversation under pressure

The same pattern appears in our shared conversation. Social media feeds were already noisy and crowded before AI-generated content arrived. Now, with machines producing text, images, and videos en masse, the volume has increased dramatically.

A respected professional may post an AI-generated video on a professional platform, and because of their status, the post quickly gathers attention. The content itself may be playful or absurd, but what follows is often more revealing. Comments are filled with generic praise, vague enthusiasm, and AI-generated ‘insights’ that say very little. People use AI tools to generate their public reactions to AI-generated content, often in the hope of being noticed by someone influential.

The result is not simply low-quality discourse. It is a public space in which signalling replaces engagement, and in which the easiest way to be visible is to contribute another shallow fragment to an already crowded stream. In such an environment, meaningful conversations struggle to survive. Thoughtful contributions require time and care, which do not align with the speed and volume encouraged by automation. AI does not create this dynamic, but it magnifies it by lowering the effort required to add to the noise.

Conversing with machines

There is another layer to the story. Besides being tools for generating content or launching calls, AI systems are also conversational partners.

Modern conversational models often suggest follow-up questions or offer to extend the discussion. Sometimes this guidance is genuinely helpful. A user who is learning about a policy issue, for example, may receive pointers to related concepts or overlooked angles. Used with intention, such prompts can deepen understanding.

The same mechanics can lead in a different direction when intention fades. What begins as a focused query can easily turn into an open-ended back-and-forth that stretches far beyond what is needed. The model is designed to remain available, responsive, and engaging. A person who is tired, procrastinating, or avoiding another task may find it easier to continue the conversation than to stop.

This pattern resembles the experience of ‘doom scrolling’, but in interactive form. The user is not just consuming an infinite feed, but co-producing it. A sense of control remains present because each reply is voluntary. The cumulative effect, however, can still be a loss of time and a scattering of attention.

Why attention belongs in the language of rights

So far, these examples might sound like quality-of-life issues rather than questions of principle. But there is a strong case for treating attention as deserving of protection at the level of rights and norms.

Attention is the gateway through which the world enters the mind. It determines which voices we hear, which information we process, and which experiences we carry forward. Without the ability to direct and sustain attention, other freedoms become difficult to exercise. Freedom of thought, expression, and association all rely on the possibility of choosing what to focus on and what to ignore.

When AI-enhanced systems are built and deployed in ways that compete aggressively for every spare moment, they do not simply cause annoyance. They interfere with the conditions under which people can think, deliberate, and participate in collective life. The risk is not that humans lose the capacity for attention, but that this capacity is continually rented out and fragmented.

To treat attention as a human right is to say that people are entitled to spaces and times when they are not constantly addressed, nudged, or targeted. It is to recognise that some forms of interruption and manipulation are incompatible with human dignity, even if they are profitable or technologically impressive.

Beyond blame: toward responsibility

It would be too simple to declare AI the villain of this story. The underlying motives are older and more familiar: profit, influence, status, and the desire to keep audiences engaged. AI has entered a system already shaped by these forces and has given their efforts more reach and efficiency.

This does not absolve designers, companies, or institutions of responsibility. On the contrary, greater power to influence attention brings greater obligations to use that power with care. The question is not only what AI tools can do, but what they should be allowed and encouraged to do.

Several directions suggest themselves:

• Clear norms and regulations around intrusive uses such as automated calls and deceptive synthetic voices.
• Design choices that allow users to limit suggestions, recommendations, and follow-up prompts, rather than defaulting to endless engagement.
• Professional and institutional standards that value depth over volume in public communication, especially in fields such as diplomacy, education, and science.

Cultural practices that honour periods of inattention to devices, such as meetings without phones, quiet hours, and spaces where digital addressing is deliberately paused.

These responses differ in scale and form, but they share a common assumption: attention is worth defending.

Defending the space to think

The arrival of AI has changed many aspects of how we work, communicate, and imagine the future. Among the less visible but most significant changes is the way these systems touch our attention. Some uses of AI genuinely broaden human capacities. They can help people learn, assist with translation and accessibility, support creativity, and open new paths for understanding complex issues. Other uses pull in the opposite direction, treating human attention as something to extract until nothing more remains.

Recognising attention as a human right does not mean banning interruption or forbidding entertainment. It means accepting that there are limits beyond which the competition for attention undermines the very capacities that make us fully human. In an age of advanced AI, defending the space to think, to listen carefully, and to converse without constant disruption may be one of the most important humanist tasks we face.

Author: Slobodan Kovrlija