A few tech giants accumulating massive power coupled with artificial intelligence is posing huge global rights challenges and needs regulation, the UN human rights chief told AFP in an interview.

Amid increasing worries over threats to democracy and with a growing number of countries at risk of sliding towards autocracy, Volker Turk said a key concern was the seeming unbridled power of a small number of technology companies.

In an interview this week at the UN rights office overlooking Lake Geneva, he pointed to how seven or eight big tech companies now boast more wealth than the entire economies of even industrialised nations.

“They have amassed an immense amount of power,” he said.

“And power, we all know, if it is not circumscribed by rule of law, by international rights law, can le

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