White House Seeks to Accelerate AI in Government with Its “Bill of Rights” | Federal Information Network

The Biden administration is calling on agencies to stop talking about artificial intelligence and actually use these tools for their day-to-day work.

The White House in October released its draft “Bill of Rights” for the design, development and deployment of AI and other automated systems.

The AI ​​Bill of Rights outlines what more than a dozen agencies will do to ensure that AI tools deployed inside and outside of government are compliant with privacy rights and civil liberties.

The administration, as part of those efforts, is working on a new federal procurement policy and guidance to ensure agencies purchase and implement AI and automation tools that are transparent and nonpartisan. taken.

Sorelle Friedler, deputy director for data and democracy in the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy, said Monday that the plan “puts the weight of the White House” behind a policy area that has caused a lot of conversation, but didn’t’ This led to widespread implementation across government.

“We’re not really innovating, but we’re adding to the conversation and helping move the conversation forward, from principles to practice,” Friedler said at a Brookings Institution event unpacking the Bill of Rights. AI.

The Biden administration also released a technical companion to the plan that serves as a roadmap for implementing transparent and accountable AI tools in government.

“We’re trying to live up to that across the federal government as well,” Friedler said.

Friedler said the non-binding policy document aims to place greater emphasis on government-wide automated systems that have the “potential to significantly impact the rights, opportunities or access of individuals. or communities” to government benefits and services.

“Increasingly, we are seeing that these technologies are causing real harm. Harms that go against our core democratic values ​​include the fundamental right to privacy, freedom from discrimination, and our fundamental dignity,” Friedler said.

A panel of AI experts said the draft AI bill of rights puts technology at the center of the administration’s ongoing efforts to ensure underserved communities have equal access to federal benefits and services.

President Joe Biden signed an executive order on his first day in office requiring agency reports on ways to ensure “the equitable distribution of government benefits.”

But Harlan Yu, executive director of Upturn, said many of those agency reports released this year didn’t address how AI and related technologies can perpetuate some of those barriers to access.

“You could probably count on one hand — a few fingers, really — how many of these plans deal with emitted technology,” Yu said. to these issues, that we really needed leadership at the highest level of government from the White House to draw political attention to these issues and make them a priority across the federal government.

Yu said Biden’s executive order also underscores how many federal agencies lack the expertise to overcome many of the technological and ethical barriers that prevent them from adopting AI tools.

“It’s something we need to fix, in the longer term,” he said.

The AI ​​Bill of Rights marks the Biden administration’s first major effort to address the use of this technology across all agencies. But the Trump administration has issued two executive orders on the subject.

Alex Engler, senior research fellow in governance studies at Brookings, said agencies haven’t prioritized implementing the Trump administration’s executive order requiring them to document their use cases. AI.

“They kind of complied, but [it was] really the bare minimum,” Engler said.

AI.gov currently lists about 100 AI use cases in federal agencies.

Engler said the draft AI bill of rights comes at an “absolutely necessary time” to unpack ethical considerations about how agencies should use AI tools.

“A lot of people might be a little burnt out with the ethics and principles of AI. That’s common, if you’re working in this space. But it’s fundamentally different that the feds have done it so carefully, so carefully, in a way that will not only stimulate governance, but also hopefully independent use of algorithms,” Engler said.

Jerome Greco, an attorney overseeing digital forensics with the Legal Aid Society, said the White House’s release of the non-binding policy document helps emphasize government regulation around the technology.

“That means there is effort, money and attention going into it. It also means that other people will pay attention to it. Whether or not that will have a lasting impact remains to be seen, but he has the ability to do so. It forces people to acknowledge what is being said there and accept it or fight it,” Greco said.

While the AI ​​Bill of Rights outlines the ethical considerations of AI for much of the civilian federal government, the document stops short of covering federal law enforcement and national security activities.

“Obviously in these areas is where a lot of this protection is needed the most,” Yu said.

The Intelligence Community and the Department of Defense released their own AI policies last year. However, Greco said there are currently few legal safeguards over how federal law enforcement agencies use facial recognition algorithms in their investigations.

“The [AI] The Bill of Rights is not binding. It is not a law. It could lead to that, and I hope it does on many fronts, but it currently does not. And our courts are not set up to handle these things,” he said.

“By exempting them, I think it emboldens them, because they’re so used to everything being exempt, not being held accountable, not having any kind of transparency. And by making that exemption explicit, it only reinforced that,” Greco added.

Friedler said the administration continues to meet with companies to develop their own ethical AI principles.

“There’s a lot of opportunity to innovate and make it a competitive advantage of the industry, to really make AI people trust AI that respects our rights,” Friedler said.

Yu said the plan represents “the first mile of a long marathon” and the impetus for the administration to introduce rulemaking and guidance, and for Congress to introduce legislation.

“This document, in the long run, will not be judged on what is on paper, but on all the concrete actions that will come out of this document, especially from federal agencies,” Yu said.