Bid to regulate AI faces challenges in US
Artificial intelligence is helping decide which Americans get the job interview, the apartment, even medical care, but the first major proposals to rein in bias in AI decision making are facing headwinds from every direction.
Lawmakers working on these bills, in states including Colorado, Connecticut and Texas, came together on Thursday to argue the case for their proposals as civil rights-oriented groups and the industry play tug-of-war with core components of the legislation.
“Every bill we run is going to end the world as we know it. That’s a common thread you hear when you run policies,” Colorado’s Democratic Senate Majority Leader Robert Rodriguez said. “We’re here with a policy that’s not been done anywhere to the extent that we’ve done it, and it’s a glass ceiling we’re breaking trying to do good policy.” Organisations including labour unions and consumer advocacy groups are pulling for more transparency from companies and greater legal recourse for citizens to sue over AI discrimination. The industry is offering tentative support but digging in its heels over those accountability measures, according to the Associated Press.
The group of bipartisan lawmakers caught in the middle – including those from Alaska, Georgia and Virginia – has been working on AI legislation together in the face of federal inaction. On Thursday, they highlighted their work across states and stakeholders, emphasising the need for AI legislation and reinforcing the importance for collaboration and compromise to avoid regulatory inconsistencies across state lines. They also argued the bills are a first step that can be built on going forward.
While over 400 Ai-related bills are being debated this year in statehouses nationwide, most target one industry or just a piece of the technology, such as deepfakes used in elections or to make indecent images. The biggest bills this team of lawmakers has put forward offer a broad framework for oversight, particularly around one of the technology’s major dilemmas: AI discrimination. Up to 83% of employers use algorithms to help in hiring, according to estimates from the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission. If nothing is done, there will almost always be bias in these AI systems, explained Suresh Venkatasubramanian, a Brown University computer and data science professor who’s teaching a class on mitigating bias in the design of these algorithms, the AP report adds.
“You have to do something explicit to not be biased in the first place,” he said.
These proposals, mainly in Colorado and Connecticut, are complex, but the core thrust is that companies would be required to perform “impact assessments” for AI systems that play a large role in making decisions for those in the US. Those reports would include descriptions of how AI figures into a decision, the data collected and an analysis of the risks of discrimination, along with an explanation of the company’s safeguards. Requiring greater access to information on the AI systems means more accountability and safety for the public. But companies worry it also raises the risk of lawsuits and the revelation of trade secrets.
David Edmonson, of Technet, a bipartisan network of technology CEOS and senior executives that lobbies on AI bills, said in a statement that the organisation works with lawmakers to “ensure any legislation addresses AI’S risk while allowing innovation to flourish.”
Under bills in Colorado and Connecticut, companies that use AI wouldn’t have to routinely submit impact assessments to the government. Instead, they would be required to disclose to the attorney general if they found discrimination – a government or independent organisation wouldn’t be testing these AI systems for bias.
Labourunionsandacademicsworrythatover reliance on companies self-reporting imperils the public or government’s ability to catch AI discrimination before it’s done harm.
“It’s already hard when you have these huge companies with billions of dollars,” said Kjersten Forseth, who represents the Colorado’s AFL-CIO, a federation of labour unions that opposes Colorado’s bill. “Essentially you are giving them an extra boot to push down on a worker or consumer.”