CDT Joins The Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights in Announcing 2020 Civil Rights Principles for the Era of Big Data
Today, the Center for Democracy & Technology is pleased to join The Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights and dozens of other leading civil rights and technology advocacy groups in announcing the 2020 Civil Rights Principles for the Era of Big Data.
In a world where daily life is increasingly shaped by rapidly advancing technologies that rely on big data to make decisions, the civil rights of vulnerable communities are particularly at risk. These principles are designed to address current threats to civil rights, including surveillance by both the public and private sectors, and disinformation on social media platforms designed to manipulate or suppress voter participation. We hope the principles will serve as a proactive guide for designing and using technology in ways that affirmatively promote justice and equity.
The 2020 principles include:
Ending high-tech profiling;
Ensuring just outcomes in sensitive automated decisions;
Preserving constitutional principles;
Ensuring that technology serves everyone;
Defining responsible use of personal information and enhancing individual rights; and
Making systems transparent and accountable.
The Civil Rights Principles for the Era of Big Data were first released in 2014, and the 2020 principles build on the prior edition to recognize the importance of technology in delivering justice to people historically subject to discrimination. They also go further in recognizing the differences between the vast amount of personal data available to companies and governments, and the tiny amount of information available to the public about that data and about how companies and governments are using it. Together, the principles were created to meet the acute need for legal protections to ensure that technology is designed and used in ways that respect civil rights, preserve privacy, ensure transparency, and hold both governments and companies accountable for harm.
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.
