New Blueprint for an AI Bill of Rights

Published: October 06, 2022

Federal Market AnalysisArtificial Intelligence/Machine LearningOSTPPolicy and Legislation

The White House Office of Science and Technology Policy issued a set of five principles to illustrate the values and protection of civil freedoms that should be built into automated systems.

When it comes to artificial intelligence (AI), the technology’s numerous possibilities are not top of mind for many federal tech leaders. Rather, many departments hesitate to implement AI due to risk in bias in algorithms and data input, potentially resulting in unfair, incorrect, and even harmful outputs. Simply put, while AI has the power to benefit the American public, it can also threaten the rights of the American public.

As a result, the White House’s Office of Science and Technology Policy (OSTP) recently released the Blueprint for an AI Bill of Rights, Making Automated Systems Work for the American People. The blueprint provides principles and associated practices to align the design and development of automated systems with protecting the rights and liberties of users and participants.

The blueprint is intended to be a guidance to federal agencies and industry, centered on the following five principles designed with extensive public input:

  1. Safe and Effective Systems. You should be protected from unsafe or ineffective systems.
  2. Algorithmic Discrimination Protections. You should not face discrimination by algorithms and systems should be used and designed in an equitable way.
  3. Data Privacy. You should be protected from abusive data practices via built-in protections, and you should have agency over how data about you is used.
  4. Notice and Explanation. You should know that an automated system is being used and understand how and why it contributes to outcomes that impact you.
  5. Human Alternatives, Consideration, and Fallback. You should be able to opt out, where appropriate, and have access to a person who can quickly consider and remedy problems you encounter.

In addition to the principles, the blueprint provides a technical companion with detailed pathways on how to uphold the principles, including why the principle is important, what should be expected of automated systems, and how these principles can move into practice.

More specifically, the technical companion provides recommendations for additional technical standards and processes for specific sectors and contexts when describing what should be expected of automated systems. Moreover, policies, laws, and practical and sociotechnical approaches to each principle is provided to portray how to move each bill of right from concept to practice.

While the blueprint is not legislatively enforceable, according to a Nextgov article, federal agencies are eager to put to practice the contents of the document.

Within the blueprint, OSTP sums up the purpose of this latest issuance as such, “Considered together, the five principles and associated practices of the Blueprint for an AI Bill of Rights form an overlapping set of backstops against potential harms. This purposefully overlapping framework, when taken as a whole, forms a blueprint to help protect the public from harm. The measures taken to realize the vision set forward in this framework should be proportionate with the extent and nature of the harm, or risk of harm, to people’s rights, opportunities, and access.”