Partnership on AI applauds the White House’s Blueprint for an AI Bill of Rights

The White House Office of Science and Technology announced a Blueprint for an AI Bill of Rights yesterday with “five principles that should guide the design, use, and deployment of automated systems to protect the American public in the age of artificial intelligence.” The goal, to protect the rights of citizens during the design, development, and deployment of Artificial Intelligence (AI), is a goal which Partnership on AI (PAI) shares and is actively encouraging through our global initiatives.

Rebecca Finlay, CEO of PAI, says “Today’s announcement is an important milestone in the international effort by countries to center the protection of rights in how we design, develop and deploy AI and other automated systems. We applaud the Office of Science and Technology Policy’s Blueprint for the AI Bill of Rights and the recognition that AI should be built in a way which will protect and support society, and not cause harm.”

The Bill of rights sets out five core protections to which everyone in America should be entitled:

• Safe and Effective Systems: You should be protected from unsafe or ineffective systems.
• Algorithmic Discrimination Protections: You should not face discrimination by algorithms and systems should be used and designed in an equitable way.
• 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.
• 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.
• Alternative Options: You should be able to opt out, where appropriate, and have access to a person who can quickly consider and remedy problems you encounter.

PAI and our Partners are working to advance many aspects of these principles including our initiatives in:

• Inclusive Research and Design: This program seeks to achieve a more holistic reimagining of how AI is developed and deployed around the world, leading to an AI industry that recognizes end users and impacted communities as essential expert groups with the aim of spurring the changes needed to develop truly inclusive AI.
• Documentation Across the AI Lifecycle: These efforts encourage adoption of responsible AI activities across organizations, highlight the importance of allocating time and resources to the effort, and support the operationalization of documentation at the tactical level when developing and deploying AI systems.
• Algorithmic Fairness: This effort seeks to understand what types of data collection practices and governance frameworks are required to ensure that fairness assessments of algorithmic systems are conducted in the public interest.
• Safety Critical AI: This program develops best practices that can help us avert likely accidents, misuses, and unintended consequences of AI technologies. 
• Synthetic Media Code of Conduct: The code is a suite of guidelines on how to ethically and responsibly develop, create, and share synthetic media.

We look forward to working with the broader AI community to build and design new collaborative initiatives guided by the Blueprint.