United States President, Joe Biden has set out plans to create an Artificial Intelligence (AI) Bill of Rights, intended to protect citizens from automated systems such as the disgraced Robodebt program in Australia.
The blueprint is intended to provide a guide to the development of AI across the US, as part of an effort to address concerns that AI systems can embed or exacerbate existing societal biases.
In a statement, the White House said well documented problems with AI included that medical systems which were supposed to help with patient care had proven unsafe, ineffective or biased.
“Algorithms used in hiring and credit decisions have been found to reflect and reproduce existing unwanted inequities or embed new harmful bias and discrimination,” the White House said.
“In addition, unchecked social media data collection undermines people’s privacy, often without their knowledge or consent.”
It said that these “deeply harmful” outcomes were not inevitable, and that automated systems and algorithms had also brought benefits, such as helping farmers to grow food more efficiently, predicting storm paths and identifying diseases in patients.
“However, civil rights and democratic values need to be affirmed,” the White House said.
Launching the plan, Deputy Director for Science and Society at the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy (OSTP), Alondra Nelson said there was a need to work together “not only just across Government, but across all sectors, to really put equity at the centre and civil rights at the centre.
Ms Nelson (pictured) said the Bill of Rights was intended to reflect these priorities in guidance for the development of AI both in the private and public sector.
“The OSTP has identified five principles that should guide the design, use, and deployment of automated systems to protect the American public: Safe and effective systems; algorithmic discrimination protections; data privacy; notice and explanation, and human alternatives, consideration, and fall-back,” Ms Nelson said.
Washington, 14 October 2022
