Bill of Rights
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The White House recently unveiled the AI Bill of Rights. What is this, why is it needed, and what does it do? In this post, I provide some perspective – from a technology and business standpoint, about this document and what it can or should mean for businesses.
Context – why is this needed
First, some context. As many people know, AI is now deployed or being deployed in virtually all business contexts, from finance (think credit card approvals) to healthcare (think disease diagnosis/risk assessments) and beyond. While many advanced technologies stay far away from consumers – when was the last time you thought about how the latest database research was used by your hospital to treat you? – AI is not like that. AI advances touch humans directly – whether it is in using human information, making decisions that affect humans, or both. Plus, AI is pervasive – now anyone from a large bank to a high school student can leverage the most advanced AIs known to humanity, and then put the resulting application in front of anyone. How do we make sure this ferocious pace of technological advancement is safe?
Enter AI Ethics
AI Ethics is the field of AI that focuses on the ethical application of AI – particularly as it relates to humans and society. AI Ethics covers areas such as AI bias – ensuring that AIs treat all humans fairly, AI and Privacy – ensuring that people can understand and control how their information is used etc. AI Ethics is a critical field as explained here. Now we can get to the AI Bill of Rights – which is a prototype design for AI Ethics in practice. The AI Bill of Rights outlines the government’s view on what human rights should be protected by organizations building and deploying AI.
What is in the AI Bill of Rights?
A detailed document on the AI Bill of Rights can be found here. The document outlines five basic rights. I have listed them below:
- Safety. The key element here is that automated systems can (and do!) make mistakes. In AI – these mistakes can occur in many ways – see the article here about how COVID-19 broke many AIs around the globe. While not all mistakes can be foreseen, operational ML techniques (MLOps) can be used to detect and mitigate AI mistakes before they …….