President Joe Biden unveiled a new AI Bill of Rights on 4th October 2022. The Bill of Rights is a set of five principles and associated practices to help guide the design, use, and deployment of automated systems to protect the rights of the American public in the age of AI.  

Biden had previously called for stronger privacy protections and for tech companies to stop collecting data. President Biden’s announcement is the White House’s vision of how the US government, technology companies, and citizens should work together to hold AI accountable. However, critics say the plan lacks teeth, and the US needs even tougher regulation around AI. 

The AI bill of Rights acts as a blueprint for building and deploying automated systems that are aligned with democratic values and protect civil rights, civil liberties, and privacy. It provides concrete steps that can be taken by many kinds of organizations—from governments at all levels to companies of all sizes—to uphold these values. In addition, experts from the private sector, governments, and international consortia have published principles and frameworks to guide the responsible use of automated systems. 

The new blueprint states that Americans should be protected from “unsafe or ineffective systems”. Algorithms should not be discriminatory, and systems should be used as designed in an equitable way. Citizens should know whenever an automated system is being used on them and understand how it contributes to outcomes.  

According to a second senior administration official, they “want to make sure that we are protecting people from the worst harms of this technology, no matter the specific underlying technological process used”. 

From impacted communities and industry stakeholders to technology developers and experts across fields and sectors, the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy led a year-long process to seek and distil input from people across the country. Issues of algorithmic and data-driven harms and potential remedies were taken into consideration.  

Through panel discussions, public listening sessions, meetings, a formal request of information and input to a publicly accessible and widely-publicized email address, people throughout the United States, public servants across Federal agencies and members of the international community spoke up about both the promises and potential harms of these technologies and played a central role in shaping the Blueprint for an AI Bill of Rights.  

The discussions delivered the message that AI has the power to transform and improve Americans’ lives and that preventing the harms of these technologies is necessary and available. The tech sector welcomed the White House’s acknowledgement that AI can also be used for good.