A Collaborative Proposal for a United States AI Bill of Rights

Immerse on 2022-02-11

A public statement submitted to the Office of Science and Technology Policy

Screenshot of the notice from the Science and Technology Policy Office asking for public comment on an “AI bill of rights”

In early October 2021, the White House’s Office of Science and Technology Policy filed a federal document to seek public comments about a proposed AI “bill of rights” that would develop new measures to safeguard against harms caused by the use of facial recognition and other biometric AI technologies to identify people or assess their character. The Alliance for Media Arts + Culture and Immerse decided to join together to submit a public statement on behalf of and with their communities. We first created an open call for comments and then we drafted a public statement based on these comments and held a second open call for signatures and projects. Below is our public statement that we submitted to the Office of Science and with signatures. We have also published a companion list of reports and projects created by members of our communities that use or address AI technologies.

We are artists, scientists, journalists, media-makers and human rights activists who actively engage with Artificial Intelligence including biometric technologies. We explore their creative potential and we critique these technologies. We engage with US and global public audiences through our work. We serve as an intermediary between the scientists and technologists and the public, helping members of the public better understand the implications of AI technologies and how they relate to broader efforts to capture and interpret reality.

In our work, we address security considerations, known vulnerabilities, issues of data privacy, bias, and transparency. We argue for consent and the ability to opt-out of AI-enabled manipulations and/or influences. We create public awareness about the harms these unregulated AI systems bring to specific groups including Black and Brown communities, people with disabilities, LGBTQ+, Indigenous communities, youth, and to the general public. We believe in the necessity of human responsibility.

We strongly urge and call for an expansive array of voices to be included as an integral part of the development and co-authorship of an AI Bill of Rights. We further urge that people from these communities have a leadership role in the agencies and structures created to make decisions and protect the public with regard to AI development. This means not only technologists, corporations, lawyers, and politicians, but also human rights activists, artists, journalists, bearers of culture and intergenerational communities from around the globe.

With this statement, organized by The Alliance for Media Arts + Culture, MIT Open Documentary Lab and Co-Creation Studio, and Immerse, we, the undersigned, also include an incomplete but important list of artistic, scientific and journalistic projects and studies from our communities that directly address these issues (in the Appendix attached). We urge the process of developing an AI Bill of Rights be actively animated and informed by this work, and our community.

SIGNED,

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