Tech Talk: Talking Tech with Grace Gedye and Matt Scherer On AI Governance
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CDT’s Tech Talk is a podcast where we dish on tech and Internet policy, while also explaining what these policies mean to our daily lives. You can find Tech Talk on Spotify, SoundCloud, and iTunes, as well as Stitcher and TuneIn.
Recently, legislative bodies across the United States have exploded as lawmakers in over 10 states introduced several closely related bills to tackle AI- systems and their impacts on various facets of society. From hiring practices to education, insurance, housing, lending, government services, and even criminal sentencing, the scope of these bills is vast and far-reaching and will likely have a rippling effect across the country.
Here to talk about these systems and the decisions they are responsible for making. Grace Gedye, Policy Analyst for Consumer Reports, and Matt Scherer, Senior Policy Counsel for CDT.
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Coalition Urges Senate Not to Let Companies Waive Financial Regulations for AI
CDT joined AI Now Institute, American Civil Liberties Union, and several organizations dedicated to tech policy, consumer protection, and civil rights in a letter to Senate leadership and the Senate Banking, Housing, and Urban Affairs Committee opposing the “AI Innovation Labs” language in Sec. 10509 of the CLARITY Act.
As concern about risks and harms related to AI systems continue to grow, a growing chorus of policymakers, industry leaders, and advocates have called for independent AI assessments. This explainer provides an overview of recent proposals for third-party assessment in the United States, including state and federal legislation, executive actions, and industry proposals.
Having third parties assess AI systems might seem like common sense, but crafting effective policies toward this goal can be devilishly tricky. A poorly-constructed ecosystem for third-party assessment could easily fail to consider the most consequential mechanisms of risk, neglect the AI harms that most impact people, or do more to protect AI companies than people.
Not All Guardrails Are Created Equal: Comparing Content Safety and Copyright Filtering
As courts and policymakers work through questions about chatbot liability, they should be wary of analogies that flatten meaningful technical differences. Copyright filtering and safety intervention share real challenges around ambiguity and evasion, but they diverge in what each control must assess, how each manifests over the course of a conversation, and how much can be verified from the outside.
