C
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:
You also outlined several strategies to implement these rights:
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
(Affiliations are for identification only)
[Endorsements for the statement may be sent to admin@caidp.org]
[Preliminary endorsements. More organizations are being added]
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And for Dr. Nelson
@AlondraNelson46
Thank you for your help!
CAIDP has already endorsed the AI Bill of Rights,3 one of the OSTP’s six policy priorities, and made specific recommendations for that initiative. . . . CAIDP also urges proceeding on a bipartisan basis. Eliminating bias, promoting fairness, ensuring accountability, and transparency for AI-based systems could also help align the political parties behind a common national purpose.