Module 6: AI Policies and Laws

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US Policy and Law on AI

The US has been slower than the EU to react to laws and policies on AI.  There were a number proposed in both the previous administration and the current one and we will learn about the current state of the art and we will dive into two specific bills that you all chose during class.

Assignment 1

Given how quickly AI is evolving, how do policy makers decide how/what to regulate? Our first set of readings focuses on this question.

You can choose one of the guides below or you can find your own policy guide – make sure it is aimed at lawmakers as a lot of the guides I can find online are more business oriented. While it is critical for business to have policies on AI, our focus in this module is on laws at the national level.

• AI Policy Guide: An Introduction for Policymakers
• A guide for policy-makers: Evaluating rapidly developing technologies including AI, large language models and beyond
• UNESCO Ethics of Artificial Intelligence
• Center for AI and Digital Policy
• The Inigo Montoya Problem for Trustworthy AI: The Use of Keywords in Policy and Research

What to turn in

Turn in a short summary of the policy guide that you found and read.

Assignment 2

We narrowed the list of bills to discuss and debate down to two. For part 2 of this assignment, read the full text of these two bills.

• S.2714 – CHAT Act
• S.1213 – Protect Elections from Deceptive AI Act

What to turn in

For this assignment, you will have

1. A grading declaration on reading the bills
2. You will need to work with your presentation group to decide which side of each bill you want to work on and then signup on the canvas page for each. We will spend time in class on the bills over several weeks.

Assignment 3

What can the government compel the big tech companies to share of your AI usage? The one I found below is very recent and relevant to one of your bills you are working on.

• Apparently they can request your ChatGPT prompts:
  • https://www.linkedin.com/feed/update/urn:li:activity:7387145054575882240/
  • https://www.linkedin.com/posts/alanaiethics_aisafety-airegulation-privacy-activity-7387145054575882240-1NPU?utm_source=share&utm_medium=member_desktop&rcm=ACoAAAABuLUBD6aNKJxc1vuFlkJ6kIXNQFYlMyE

I also found a Brookings Institute reading on generative AI for political ads that is relevant to the other bill you are working on.

• A policy framework to govern the use of generative AI in political ads

What to turn in

For this assignment:

1. You have a grading declaration on the readings above
2. You need to find one additional reading for each bill that are in the news or policy proposals outside of Congress (like the Brookings one above) that are relevant to the bills. Turn in a short summary of these and be prepared to discuss as part of your debate how they are relevant and may required changes to the bills.

Assignment 4

Liability is a big part of policies and laws focusing on AI. It is also a complicated question across many applications of AI. If an Ai doctor misdiagnoses you, who is responsible? If an AI weather app tells you that you are not as risk for a tornado and yet one hits, who is responsible? If your AI driven car runs over someone, who is responsible? These are tricky questions in the legal system! The article below is short and explains how Tort law works.

• Liability for Harms from AI Systems: The Application of U.S. Tort Law and Liability to Harms from Artificial Intelligence Systems

Below are some articles relevant to the liability questions above. You can read these or you can find another area of AI liability of interest to you and your presentation group and bring a short (1-2 slides) summary to class.

• When AIs Outperform Doctors: Confronting the Challenges of a Tort-Induced Over-Reliance on Machine Learning.  This paper looks much longer than I usually assign but it is a legal brief, which means the references are done as footnotes and most pages are really only 1/4-1/2 page of text.  
• Tesla, Self-Driving Cars, and Liability: What Happens When AI Causes a Crash?
• Do no harm: a roadmap for responsible machine learning for health care

What to turn in

A short summary (1-2 slides) of the liability and application area for AI that you explored. If it is relevant to our bills, make sure to say how (it doesn’t have to be, you can explore something just because it is of interest to you).

Assignment 5

At first this might seem like a different topic but security is quite related to all of the liability and guidelines we have read about above!  In fact, several of the international policies and guidelines discussed security directly.  Today we will jump into some specific readings focusing on security. Pick one of the following (or another good in-depth article on AI and national security) and summarize. If you find only a news article, please find a related report on it so you learn more about the subject in depth.

• The Center for Security and Emerging Technology (CSET) is a great resource for finding new readings on AI and security – dive into their site and read one of the reports that interests you.
• A older but good book chapter “Security Risks of Artificial Intelligence-Enabled Systems.”
• The Brookings Institute has an older video series on  AI and national security

What to turn in

A short (1-2 slides) summary of the resource you found on security and AI focused on liability and/or policy/law.