5 April 2024, Paris, France — World Privacy Forum Executive Director Pam Dixon has been invited to speak at the State House of Mongolia for the Government of Mongolia’s National Consultation on e-Health. She will be speaking twice at this event; first, on the topic of Artificial Intelligence in Healthcare and second, on Big Data in e-Health. She will be presenting later in the week on AI governance and Privacy before the Ministry of Digital Development and Communications, and on the topic of AI Governance Tools before the National Human Rights Commission of Mongolia. All speeches will take place in Ulaanbaatar, Mongolia.
Today the Biden-Harris Administration published a Memorandum that sets forth how U.S. Federal Agencies and Executive Departments will govern their use of Artificial Intelligence. The OMB memorandum provides an extensive and in some ways surprising articulation of emergent guardrails around modern AI. There are many points of interest to discuss, but the most striking includes the thread of biometrics systems guidance throughout the memorandum and continuing on in the White House Fact Sheet and associated materials. Additionally, the articulation of minimum practices for safety -impacting and rights- impacting AI will likely become important touch points in regulatory discussions in the U.S. and elsewhere. The guidance represents a significant policy shift for the U.S. Federal government, particularly around biometrics.
In December 2023, WPF submitted detailed comments to the U.S. Office of Management and Budget regarding its Request for Comments on Advancing Governance, Innovation, and Risk Management for Agency Use of Artificial Intelligence Memorandum. OMB published the request in the Federal Register on November 3, 2023. This particular Memorandum is of historic importance, as it articulates the establishment of new agency requirements in the areas of AI governance, innovation, and risk management, and would direct agencies to adopt specific minimum risk management practices for uses of AI that impact the rights and safety of the public.
We are pleased to announce the publication of a new WPF report, “Risky Analysis: Assessing and Improving AI Governance Tools.” This report sets out a definition of AI governance tools, documents why and how these tools are critically important for trustworthy AI, and where these tools are around the world. The report also documents problems in some AI governance tools themselves, and suggests pathways to improve AI governance tools and create an evaluative environment to measure their effectiveness. AI systems should not be deployed without simultaneously evaluating the potential adverse impacts of such systems and mitigating their risks, and most of the world agrees about the need to take precautions against the threats posed. The specific tools and techniques that exist to evaluate and measure AI systems for their inclusiveness, fairness, explainability, privacy, safety and other trustworthiness issues — called in the report collectively AI governance tools – can improve such issues. While some AI governance tools provide reassurance to the public and to regulators, the tools too often lack meaningful oversight and quality assessments. Incomplete or ineffective AI governance tools can create a false sense of confidence, cause unintended problems, and generally undermine the promise of AI systems. The report contains rich background details, use cases, potential solutions to the problems discussed in the report, and a global index of AI Governance Tools.
WPF has organized a robust and interactive tutorial on advanced AI governance and privacy for Computer Vision systems (and beyond), to be held at the IEEE/CVF Winter Conference on Applications of Computer Vision (WACV). WACV is the premier international computer vision event comprised of a main conference and several co-located workshops and tutorials.
What makes this AI governance and data protection tutorial compelling? The 8 speakers for this tutorial are working at the top of their respective fields, with presentations that combine to make a muscular, socio-technical dive into today’s most pressing issues around AI technology, governance, privacy, and policy structures. This tutorial is arranged in a logical flow that moves participants through the technical and the policy aspects of advanced systems development and governance. including technical, legal, ethical, and privacy analysis, as well as emerging norms and additional considerations to be aware of. The tutorial will include ample time for analysis and discussion, and will be participatory.
