Policy

The White House can build on its AI Bill of Rights blueprint today

The administration doesn’t have to wait around for Congress to get moving on some of the principles in the blueprint.

An illustration of the White House, stylized as a blueprint, against a blue background featuring a light pattern of "brains" also rendered in a blueprint style

"The president … has the ability to take direct action through executive order to ensure that the federal government puts the blueprint into action for existing government uses of these systems."

Illustration: Naeblys/iStock/Getty Images Plus; Protocol

Caitriona Fitzgerald is EPIC’s deputy director and Ben Winters is EPIC counsel.

The White House Office of Science and Technology Policy last week released a “Blueprint” for an “AI Bill of Rights.” While the principles set out in the blueprint do not have the force of law, there are several actions the White House can take to put them into practice within the federal government while simultaneously pushing for new legal protections. The Biden Administration should lead by example.

The major principles set out in the AI Bill of Rights are that AI systems must be safe, be effective, be free of discrimination, respect data privacy, make their use known, and have an extensive structure of human oversight.

Some have praised the blueprint laid out by OSTP, while others lament that it is toothless without laws or sufficient action. Both are right: The Office of Science and Technology Policy serves as an adviser to the president, so by setting out a strong set of principles, they are doing the most they can within their authority. But the White House and other agencies can work with OSTP in the “whole of government” to make policy changes based on principles laid out in the AI Bill of Rights.

The blueprint provides clear endorsement of several key protections that are in pending legislation but not yet enacted at the federal level. These include data minimization, which stands for the simple principle that entities should only collect the data necessary to perform a function an individual has requested, as well as a requirement to conduct independent testing to evaluate effectiveness and possible discriminatory impacts of algorithms. The blueprint even states that certain tools should not be used at all if testing indicates they are unsafe or ineffective, and that “[c]ontinuous surveillance and monitoring should not be used in education, work, housing, or in other contexts where the use of such surveillance technologies is likely to limit rights, opportunities, or access.” The White House can support legislation, direct agency action, and lead by example by implementing these principles when AI tools are used by government actors.

At the launch event, two cabinet members announced specific new initiatives that align with the blueprint. Secretary of Education Miguel Cardona revealed upcoming efforts to publish guidance on the use of education technology such as automated proctoring systems, which place students under constant surveillance and have led to false accusations of cheating. Secretary of Health and Human Services Xavier Becerra announced an industry-wide survey of algorithms used in health care. These are good examples of the kinds of actions executive agencies can take to move the AI Bill of Rights principles into practice.

The president also has the ability to take direct action through executive order to ensure that the federal government puts the blueprint into action for existing government uses of these systems. President Biden should update Executive Order 13859, originally issued by President Trump in 2019, which ordered federal agencies to publish information by May 2021 about how they planned to regulate AI in compliance with principles previously laid out by OSTP. Very few agencies have complied with the order thus far. President Biden should now update it to require agencies to comply within the principles laid out in the blueprint, and the administration should ensure compliance with the updated order.

President Biden should also renew the urgency for agencies to comply with Executive Order 13960, also ordered by former President Trump, in 2020, which requires agencies to publish information about all AI systems they use and directs agencies to complete algorithmic impact assessments. Without a proper accounting of the AI tools in use by federal agencies today, it will be very difficult to implement the AI Bill of Rights.

Several currentuses of AI clearly violate the blueprint and should no longer be used. The president should also stop encouraging agencies to spend American Rescue Plan funds on ShotSpotter and other “gunshot detection” technologies, which change police behavior but have not been shown to decrease gun violence. These tools are in violation of the blueprint’s principles that AI tools must be safe, effective, nondiscriminatory, and transparent.

Similarly, the Department of Justice continues to provide millions of dollars in grants for police technology, including almost $4 million in 2021. Our organization, the Electronic Privacy Information Center, as well as the NAACP Legal Defense Fund and several others, has called for an immediate stop to these grants and a review of what products the government has funded in order to determine whether they meet the standards of safe, effective, and equitable AI.

On the legislative front, the AI Bill of Rights principles are embodied in both the American Data Privacy Protection Act and the Algorithmic Accountability Act of 2022, both of which the administration could put its support behind.

There has been substantial investment in the development and adoption of AI, but nowhere near as much money or energy put toward safeguards or protection. We should not repeat the same self-regulatory mistakes made with social media and online advertising that left us in the privacy crisis we are in today. The Blueprint for an AI Bill of Rights sets out the principles that must be followed in order to ensure that the use of AI is fair, equitable, and nondiscriminatory. It’s time to ensure those principles are followed in practice.

The authors are staff members at EPIC, the Electronic Privacy Information Center. EPIC is a nonprofit research center that advocates for privacy, civil liberties, and protection against algorithmic discrimination.

Fintech

Judge Zia Faruqui is trying to teach you crypto, one ‘SNL’ reference at a time

His decisions on major cryptocurrency cases have quoted "The Big Lebowski," "SNL," and "Dr. Strangelove." That’s because he wants you — yes, you — to read them.

The ways Zia Faruqui (right) has weighed on cases that have come before him can give lawyers clues as to what legal frameworks will pass muster.

Photo: Carolyn Van Houten/The Washington Post via Getty Images

“Cryptocurrency and related software analytics tools are ‘The wave of the future, Dude. One hundred percent electronic.’”

That’s not a quote from "The Big Lebowski" — at least, not directly. It’s a quote from a Washington, D.C., district court memorandum opinion on the role cryptocurrency analytics tools can play in government investigations. The author is Magistrate Judge Zia Faruqui.

Keep ReadingShow less
Veronica Irwin

Veronica Irwin (@vronirwin) is a San Francisco-based reporter at Protocol covering fintech. Previously she was at the San Francisco Examiner, covering tech from a hyper-local angle. Before that, her byline was featured in SF Weekly, The Nation, Techworker, Ms. Magazine and The Frisc.

The financial technology transformation is driving competition, creating consumer choice, and shaping the future of finance. Hear from seven fintech leaders who are reshaping the future of finance, and join the inaugural Financial Technology Association Fintech Summit to learn more.

Keep ReadingShow less
FTA
The Financial Technology Association (FTA) represents industry leaders shaping the future of finance. We champion the power of technology-centered financial services and advocate for the modernization of financial regulation to support inclusion and responsible innovation.
Enterprise

AWS CEO: The cloud isn’t just about technology

As AWS preps for its annual re:Invent conference, Adam Selipsky talks product strategy, support for hybrid environments, and the value of the cloud in uncertain economic times.

Photo: Noah Berger/Getty Images for Amazon Web Services

AWS is gearing up for re:Invent, its annual cloud computing conference where announcements this year are expected to focus on its end-to-end data strategy and delivering new industry-specific services.

It will be the second re:Invent with CEO Adam Selipsky as leader of the industry’s largest cloud provider after his return last year to AWS from data visualization company Tableau Software.

Keep ReadingShow less
Donna Goodison

Donna Goodison (@dgoodison) is Protocol's senior reporter focusing on enterprise infrastructure technology, from the 'Big 3' cloud computing providers to data centers. She previously covered the public cloud at CRN after 15 years as a business reporter for the Boston Herald. Based in Massachusetts, she also has worked as a Boston Globe freelancer, business reporter at the Boston Business Journal and real estate reporter at Banker & Tradesman after toiling at weekly newspapers.

Image: Protocol

We launched Protocol in February 2020 to cover the evolving power center of tech. It is with deep sadness that just under three years later, we are winding down the publication.

As of today, we will not publish any more stories. All of our newsletters, apart from our flagship, Source Code, will no longer be sent. Source Code will be published and sent for the next few weeks, but it will also close down in December.

Keep ReadingShow less
Bennett Richardson

Bennett Richardson ( @bennettrich) is the president of Protocol. Prior to joining Protocol in 2019, Bennett was executive director of global strategic partnerships at POLITICO, where he led strategic growth efforts including POLITICO's European expansion in Brussels and POLITICO's creative agency POLITICO Focus during his six years with the company. Prior to POLITICO, Bennett was co-founder and CMO of Hinge, the mobile dating company recently acquired by Match Group. Bennett began his career in digital and social brand marketing working with major brands across tech, energy, and health care at leading marketing and communications agencies including Edelman and GMMB. Bennett is originally from Portland, Maine, and received his bachelor's degree from Colgate University.

Enterprise

Why large enterprises struggle to find suitable platforms for MLops

As companies expand their use of AI beyond running just a few machine learning models, and as larger enterprises go from deploying hundreds of models to thousands and even millions of models, ML practitioners say that they have yet to find what they need from prepackaged MLops systems.

As companies expand their use of AI beyond running just a few machine learning models, ML practitioners say that they have yet to find what they need from prepackaged MLops systems.

Photo: artpartner-images via Getty Images

On any given day, Lily AI runs hundreds of machine learning models using computer vision and natural language processing that are customized for its retail and ecommerce clients to make website product recommendations, forecast demand, and plan merchandising. But this spring when the company was in the market for a machine learning operations platform to manage its expanding model roster, it wasn’t easy to find a suitable off-the-shelf system that could handle such a large number of models in deployment while also meeting other criteria.

Some MLops platforms are not well-suited for maintaining even more than 10 machine learning models when it comes to keeping track of data, navigating their user interfaces, or reporting capabilities, Matthew Nokleby, machine learning manager for Lily AI’s product intelligence team, told Protocol earlier this year. “The duct tape starts to show,” he said.

Keep ReadingShow less
Kate Kaye

Kate Kaye is an award-winning multimedia reporter digging deep and telling print, digital and audio stories. She covers AI and data for Protocol. Her reporting on AI and tech ethics issues has been published in OneZero, Fast Company, MIT Technology Review, CityLab, Ad Age and Digiday and heard on NPR. Kate is the creator of RedTailMedia.org and is the author of "Campaign '08: A Turning Point for Digital Media," a book about how the 2008 presidential campaigns used digital media and data.

Latest Stories
Bulletins