The White House released a blueprint for an Artificial Intelligence (AI) Bill of Rights that companies should follow to protect the data of the American people. The momentous, pro-data privacy blueprint was published on October 4 and advocates the necessary steps companies are expected to take to preserve people’s identity, among other concerns.
The AI Bill of Rights seeks to remove unwanted inequities and harmful biases leading to discrimination based on algorithms that allow stealthy tracking of users with specific goals without their consent.
The White House Office of Science and Technology Policy published the bill that focuses on five principles:
- Ensuring safe and effective systems,
- Algorithmic discrimination protections,
- Data privacy,
- Notice and explanation
- Human alternatives, consideration, and fallback
The principle of safe and effective systems urges companies to make the user data in their systems secure and to develop automated systems after taking feedback from diverse communities.
Algorithmic discrimination protections offer fairness and freedom from discrimination based on users’ system data. The principle of data privacy aims to make people aware of how companies use information in various circumstances. The notice and explanation principle relayed that users must be made fully aware of automated systems and how it impacts them.
The human alternatives, consideration, and fallback principle urge entities to offer users features, including opt-out as needed. It also asks companies to provide problem-solving opportunities with a real person on the other end in case the system appears less helpful.
A call to people to act
While the AI Bill of Rights encouraged the use of automated systems, facilitating progress in several sectors, it also touched upon the price paid due to the compromise of civil rights.
Sensitive user data stored in systems that have been hacked is causing identity theft, emotional stress, and scams, among other problems. The bill urged people to act proactively to preserve fairness and privacy.
Although this blueprint is not binding, developers and users of AI must follow it not to expose users. Using automation and artificial intelligence has become widespread in almost every sector, like education, healthcare, banking, etc. The AI Bill of Rights was put together by researchers, journalists, policymakers, advocates, and technologists.
