White House AI Bill of Rights Looks to Rein in 'Unaccountable' Algorithms
A lengthy statement of AI policy principles announced Tuesday(Opens in a new window) by the White House doesn’t actually say, “An AI may not injure a human being or, through inaction, allow a human being to come to harm,” but it might as well lead off with that sentence.
This "Blueprint for an AI Bill of Rights(Opens in a new window)," put forth by the executive branch’s Office of Science and Technology Policy after months of consultation, sticks to the harm-reduction priorities that science-fiction author Isaac Asimov famously laid out in his Three Laws of Robotics(Opens in a new window).
But where Asimov was trying to predict the future, this report comes after such AI-driven systems as facial recognition have become part of the basic workflow for such tasks as applying for a job, signing up for a car-share service, or flying to another country, often with little consideration of possible failure modes.
As the White House blog post about the blueprint says in a paragraph that could land in a future speech by President Biden: “This blueprint is for the older Americans(Opens in a new window) denied critical health benefits because of an algorithm change. The student(Opens in a new window) erroneously accused of cheating by AI-enabled video surveillance. The fathers(Opens in a new window) wrongfully arrested because of facial recognition technology. The Black Americans(Opens in a new window) blocked from a kidney transplant after an AI assumed they were at lesser risk for kidney disease. It is for everyone who interacts daily with these technologies—and every person whose life has been altered by an unaccountable algorithm.”
This lengthy document–the printable version(Opens in a new window) (PDF) runs 73 pages and
Read more on pcmag.com
