CDT CEO Alexandra Givens Testimony Before Senate Judiciary on Artificial Intelligence and Human Rights

On Tuesday, June 12, 2023 CDT CEO Alexandra Givens is testifying before the U.S. Senate Committee on the Judiciary Subcommittee on Human Rights and the Law, in a hearing entitled “Artificial Intelligence and Human Rights.”

A portion of Alex’s testimony is pasted below, and you can read the full testimony here.

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Chair Ossoff, Ranking Member Blackburn and other members of the Subcommittee, thank you for inviting me to testify today on the important issue of AI and human rights. The world’s attention is rightly focused on the possibilities and the risks of AI systems. As policymakers look to address potential harms and promote responsible innovation, it is essential that they do so with a focus on human rights – and in particular, with the conviction that fundamental rights and freedoms belong inalienably to all people, including the rights to liberty, privacy, freedom of expression and opinion, peaceful assembly, and equal treatment before the law.

AI systems are already being used in ways that threaten these rights, and rapid advancements in generative AI and text and image analysis will exacerbate the risks. Today I will focus on two distinct areas where AI harms are already being felt: the use of face recognition and biometric surveillance capabilities by law enforcement, and the impact of generative AI on elections and democratic discourse. For reasons I will explain in my testimony, these applications of AI are vastly different from one another, with different considerations at stake as Congress considers appropriate policy interventions.

Read the full testimony here.