TECHNOLOGY AND HUMAN RIGHTS
In January 2022, the Digital Welfare State & Human Rights Project team at the Center together with their partners at the Institute for Law, Innovation & Technology (iLIT) at Temple University, Beasley School of Law, submitted expert commentary to the United States White House’s Blueprint for an AI Bill of Rights initiative.
The White House Office of Science and Technology Policy (OSTP) had embarked on an initiative to design a “Bill of Rights for an AI-Powered World,” and issued a Request for Information on Biometric Identification Technologies. The OSTP asked for input from varied experts to provide information about the scope and extent of the usage of biometric technologies, and to help the OSTP to better understand ‘the stakeholders that are, or may be, impacted by their use or regulation.’ In response to this request, our team submitted a 10-page submission to provide international and comparative information to inform OSTP’s understanding of the social, economic, and political impacts of biometric technologies, in research and regulation. The submission discusses the implications of AI-driven biometric technologies for human rights law, democracy, and the rule of law, and provides information about the ways in which various groups and communities can be negatively impacted by such technologies.
In this submission, we sought especially to draw attention to the importance of learning from other countries’ experiences with biometrics, and to show that the implications of biometric technologies go far beyond the frequently-raised concerns about surveillance and privacy. We therefore provided a range of comparative examples from countries around the world where biometric technologies have been adopted, including within essential services such as social security and housing sectors. We argued that the OSTP, in drafting its upcoming “AI Bill of Rights,” should learn from these comparative examples, to take account of how biometric technologies can affect social rights such as health, social security, education, housing, and employment. The submission also urges the OSTP to place constraints on the actions of the U.S. government and U.S. companies abroad.
This submission fed into the United States White House’s Blueprint for an AI Bill of Rights, released in October 2022. The Blueprint has since laid the groundwork for regulatory efforts to assess, manage, and prevent the risks posed by AI in the United States and abroad, and has been built upon in subsequent policy efforts.
