The Biden administration on Tuesday unveiled the AI ‘Bill of Rights’, which aims at ‘preventing harm caused by the rise of artificial intelligence systems’. According to the federal legislative history of the United States, from 2015 to 2021, there were significantly more proposed laws relating to AI than passed, with only 2% of those laws becoming law.

The chart below shows the total number of AI-related policy papers published in the United States from 2018 to 2021. As well as topics of the AI policy papers in 2021, It can be used to gauge how popular AI is among American policymakers.

Officials state that the blueprint for an AI Bill of Rights does not set out specific enforcement actions but is intended as a call for action for the US government to safeguard the civil and digital rights of the citizens.

Behind the scenes 

Officials stated that the paper would include guidelines to protect people’s data and limit surveillance.

Director of the office of science and technology policy, Alondra Nelson, said, “This is the Biden-Harris administration saying that we need to work together, not only just across government but across all sectors to put equity and civil rights at the centre of the ways that we make, use and govern technologies. As a result, we can and should expect better and demand better from our technologies.”

Authorities said the white paper would represent a major advancement in the administration’s plan to hold technology companies accountable. In addition to highlighting various federal agencies’ commitments to weighing new rules, the paper will also study the specific impacts of AI technologies. 

The document incorporates feedback from civil society groups, industry researchers, technologists, and tech firms such as Palantir and Microsoft that emerged after a year-long consultation with more than two-dozen different departments. 

The Bill states five core principles that should be built into AI systems. This would limit the impacts of algorithmic bias, give users control over their data, and ensure that automated systems are used transparently. The non-binding principles cite agency studies, academic research, and news reports documenting real-world issues and harms from AI-powered tools.

The US vs the world 

State-level legislation governing artificial intelligence has been quite common in the US. At least one AI-related measure has been proposed in 41 out of the 50 states as of 2021; some states have been more active than others.

It’s intriguing to see the U.S. government take action and try to control AI to prevent it from becoming a threat to any humans. As per the Bloomberg Government, Spain, the UK, and the USA topped the list, following the pattern of the proportion of AI mentions in legislation that became laws. With 939 mentions, the United Kingdom came in the first place, followed by Spain, Japan, the United States, and Australia.

On the contrary, the number of mentions of AI in Indian legislative proceedings, between 2016-2021, stood at 34. Out of 24 countries mentioned in that list, India stands last sixth position in terms of AI mentions in legislative proceedings.