AI Regulation in the US: A Bill of Rights for Artificial Intelligence

After the EU Commission presented its draft of an AI regulation in April 2021 (see our article in ZdIW 2021, 247), there are now also increasing indications of a possible regulation of artificial intelligence in the US.

The directors of the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy (OSTP), an advisory body to the US president on technology issues, propose in a recent paper to define a Bill of Rights for the AI era. The US should define what it expects from AI technologies, for example

• the right to know when AI is influencing a decision that affects civil rights and lliberties, or

• the freedom from being subjected to AI that hasn’t been carefully audited to ensure that it’s accurate, unbiased, and has been trained on sufficiently representative data sets.

The next step, the OSTP's directors argue, should be to discuss the means by which these rights can be protected and whether new regulation is necessary for this purpose.

In parallel, the OSTP is consulting the public on AI-based biometric identification systems (e.g. face, voice and gesture recognition). The OSTP would like to know how biometric identification systems are used today, what developments are foreseeable and which groups of people would be affected by these systems and their regulation.

AI regulation blueprint?

The consultation could be the first step towards regulating AI-based biometric identification and a blueprint for regulating other AI use cases in the US.

AI regulation in the US would have implications for German and European companies. These would have to develop their applications in such a way that they comply with both European and US requirements. The obligations that are currently being discussed in the US are similar to those that the EU Commission has also included in its draft AI regulation. However, it will only become clear in a few years' time whether and to what extent the regulations on both sides of the Atlantic will differ.