Support the OSTP AI Bill of Rights

October 8, 2022

 

Dear Director Prabhakar,

 

We congratulate you on your confirmation as Director of the Office of Science and Technology Policy. The mission of OSTP is vital for the American people.[FN]  We wish you success.

 

We write also to urge you to carry forward the work of the OSTP on the AI Bill of Rights. 

One year ago, the OSTP Director and Deputy Director wrote, “some of the failings of AI may be unintentional, but they are serious and they disproportionately affect already marginalized individuals and communities. . . . Americans have a right to expect better. Powerful technologies should be required to respect our democratic values and abide by the central tenet that everyone should be treated fairly.”

 

They concluded, “we need a ‘bill of rights’ to guard against the powerful technologies we have created” and said, “In the coming months, the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy (which we lead) will be developing such a bill of rights, working with partners and experts across the federal government, in academia, civil society, the private sector, and communities all over the country. Technology can only work for everyone if everyone is included, so we want to hear from and engage with everyone. You can email us directly at ai-equity@ostp.eop.gov.”

 

The AI Bill of Rights Initiative was endorsed by the White House. Six listening sessions were organized. A public comment process was initiated. In April of this year, the Deputy Director said the AI Bill of Rights would be released in May. But now almost a year since the initiative was launched, there has been no word from OSTP about next steps.

 

This delay imposes a real cost on Americans who are every day subject to opaque determinations that impact their opportunities in housing, employment, credit, and education. The delay also carries a cost for US leadership. As Secretary Blinken explained last year, “More than anything else, our task is to put forth and carry out a compelling vision for how to use technology in a way that serves our people, protects our interests and upholds our democratic values.” But absent a legislative agenda or clear statement of principles, neither US allies nor adversaries are clear about the U.S. AI policy objectives. 

 

The United States needs a positive, compelling vision for the Age of Artificial Intelligence, one that recognizes the risks as well as the benefits. The OSTP’s AI Bill of Rights is the right starting point. And as the Director of OSTP and the President’s top science advisor, you are uniquely qualified to lead this effort.

 

[FN] “The mission of OSTP is to maximize the benefits of science and technology to advance health, prosperity, security, environmental quality, and justice for all Americans.” Office of Science and Technology Policy, https://www.whitehouse.gov/ostp/

 

Sincerely,

 

Marc Rotenberg, President, CAIDP

Merve Hickok, Chair, CAIDP; Founder AI Ethicist

Prof. Ben Shneiderman, UMD Department of Computer Science; author, Human Centered AI (Oxford 2022)

Mélissa M’Raidi-Kechichian

Sneha Revanur, Encode Justice

Cari Miller, Center for Inclusive Change

Dmitry Mikhailov, ACM TCP

Paul Hyland, Chair, Intellectual Property Subcommittee, ACM US Technology Policy Committee

Nathan Fox, Ockom

Prajwal Saokar

John Jarocki

James Hendrick

Evelina Ayrapetyan

Prof. James Hendler, Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute

Geysa Lopez Fonzaghi

 

[more names to be added]

 

 

CAIDP Statement to the

US Office of Science and Technology Policy

regarding

the AI Bill of Rights 

May 18, 2022

 

 

May 18, 2022

 

Director Dr. Alondra Nelson

Office of Science and Technology Policy

Washington, DC

 

Dear Dr. Nelson,

 

We are writing to you regarding the need to move forward the proposal for a Bill of Rights for the Age of Artificial Intelligence. As you wrote last year, "“In the United States, some of the failings of AI may be unintentional, but they are serious and they disproportionately affect already marginalized individuals and communities. They often result from AI developers not using appropriate data sets and not auditing systems comprehensively, as well as not having diverse perspectives around the table to anticipate and fix problems before products are used . . .”

 

You recently described the AI Bill of Rights as a top priority and indicated that your office would release the final document in the next few weeks. We support this initiative and we are optimistic that the Office of Science and Technology Policy will set out a framework  that is concrete, meaningful, and builds on established AI policy frameworks, such as the OECD AI Principles and the Universal Guidelines for AI (UGAI). 

 

The Center for AI and Digital Policy (CAIDP) strongly supports AI policies that advance democratic values and promote broad social inclusion based on fundamental rights, democratic institutions, and the rule of law. We write now to share our expectations for the forthcoming AI Bill of Rights. The AI Bill of Rights will be vitally important to help counter bias and protect fundamental rights in the design and deployment of AI-based systems in in the United States. We urge you to establish a Bill of Rights that sets out concrete principles, avoids qualifiers, builds on prior AI initiatives, and is bipartisan. 

 

A good model is the Universal Guidelines for AI (UGAI), the first human rights framework for AI. The UGAI set out basic rights and obligations for the use of AI that could serve as a helpful guide for the AI Bill of Rights. More than 300 experts and 60 organizations, including leading scientific and computing societies in the United States such as the American Association for the Advancement of Science, endorsed the Universal Guidelines for AI. The UGAI included fairness, accountability, transparency, and human determination principles. Obligations included standards for accuracy, security, and public safety and prohibitions on practices such as secret profiling and social credit scores, which enable government surveillance and discrimination.

 

The United States has also made important commitments about AI and democratic values. In the 2019 Executive Order on Maintaining American Leadership in AI, the United States said it would “foster public trust and confidence in AI technologies and protect civil liberties, privacy, and American values in their application[.]” That same year, the United States endorsed  the OECD AI Principles, which established a national commitment to inclusive growth, sustainable development, human-centered values, fairness, transparency, explainability, security, safety, and accountability. In 2020, the Department of Defense adopted ethical AI principles requiring AI systems to be responsible, equitable, traceable, reliable, and governable. And in 2021, the United States joined with other G-7 nations to promote “robust transparency” to counter the impact of algorithmic bias.

 

In your article last year, you outlined several key elements for the AI Bill of Rights:

• Your right to know when and how AI is influencing a decision that affects your civil rights and civil liberties;
• Your freedom from being subjected to AI that hasn’t been carefully audited to ensure that it’s accurate, unbiased, and has been trained on sufficiently representative data sets;
• Your freedom from pervasive or discriminatory surveillance and monitoring in your home, community, and workplace; and
• Your right to meaningful recourse if the use of an algorithm harms you. 

You also outlined several strategies to implement these rights:

• The federal government could refuse to buy software or technology products that fail to respect these rights;
• Federal contractors could be required to use technologies that adhere to this “bill of rights,” and
• New laws and regulations could be adopted.

We also appreciate your public outreach for this initiative.

 

Thank you for you consideration of our views. We look forward to the release of the AI Bill of Rights.We welcome to opportunity to discuss the initiative further.

 

 

[Preliminary endorsements. More names are being added]

 

Merve Hickok, Chair, CAIDP; Founder AI Ethicist

Marc Rotenberg, President, CAIDP

Karine Caunes, Global Program Director, CAIDP

Dr. Pablo Molina

Cristos Velasco, CAIDP Outreach Board Member.

Larissa Zutter, CAIDP Board Member

Doaa Abu Elyounes, UNESCO Bioethics and Ethics of Science Section, Ecole Normale Superieur ENS Paris

Dr. Lorraine Kisselburgh, Inaugural Chair, ACM Technology Policy Council

Prof. Ben Shneiderman, UMD Department of Comuter Science; author, Human Centered AI (Oxford 2022)

Prof. Moshe Vardi, Rice University

Somaieh Nikpoor

Eddan Katz

Rachel Stockton

Prof. Kevin Lee, Intel Social Justice and Racial Equity Professor of Law, North Carolina Central University School of Law

Roberto Lopez-Davila

Sharvari Dhote

Cecilia Garibotti

Dr. Grace Thomson

Joel Kumwenda

Prof. L Jean Camp, Indiana University School of Informatics and Computing

Tamra Moore

August Gweon

Mark Hahn

Prof. James Hendler, Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute

Prof. Eugene H. Spafford, Purdue University

Dr. Monica Lopez, Cognitive Insights for Artificial Intelligence

Giuliano Borter, CAIDP

Anirban Sen

Ricardo Baeza-Yates, EAI, Northestaern Universtiy

Preethika Pilinja

Prof. Markus Krebsz

Jessica Seamands

Irana Buzu, Council of Europe

Amelia McGowan

Victoria Blackham

Laurie Burgess

Amanda Barber

Prof. Kevin Lee, NCCU

Fred W Stawitz

Dr.  Leyla Keser, Istanbul Bilgi University (Turkey)

Prof. Markus Krebsz

Sharvari Dhote (Canada)

Joshua Scarpino, Ethical AI Researcher

Dana Motley, Motley Matrix LLC

Victoria Blackham

Dalila Hoover

Tina Lassiter

Susanna Raj, Founder & CEO of AI4Nomads, AI Ethicist & Inclusive AI Researcher

Sudha Jamthe, Stanford University, Barcelona Technology School

Marcel Zutter (Switzerland)

Michael Nix

 

(Affiliations are for identification only)

 

[Endorsements for the statement may be sent to admin@caidp.org]

 

 

[Preliminary endorsements. More organizations are being added]

• Coalición de Derechos Humanos
• Common Defense
• Defending Rights and Dissent
• Equal Justice Society
• Encode Justice
• Fix Democracy First
• Government Accountability Project (GAP)
• Government Information Watch
• The Human AI Institute
• William E. Morris Institute for Justice
• National Network for Immigrant and Refugee Rights
• Organic Consumers Association
• Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility
• Restore the Fourth
• SMART Elections