Will Beacon Hill rein in AI?
When historians look back on 2023, they’ll describe it, among other things, as the moment when everybody started freaking out about artificial intelligence.
From: WGBH
Excerpt:
“The justification that governments use ... is that they want to make sure that they’re taking the bias, the human bias, out of the equation for decision making,” Crockford said. “[But] we have seen that in many cases, these systems actually solidify, replicate, codify, calcify that bias.”
State Rep. Simon Cataldo, a co-filer on the House bill, raises that same concern. He cites the juvenile probation system and the Disabled Persons Protection System as two government entities already using unregulated risk-assessment systems to make consequential decisions. And, like Crockford, he believes the time is ripe for the Legislature to step in.
“There’s just too much that we don’t know,” Cataldo said. “And the [discrepancy] between what’s happening and our understanding of what’s happening is only going to widen over time, as the prevalence of these technologies increases, unless we act.”
At this stage of the legislative session, predicting the fate of any particular bill is a dicey business. But the House bill in question — also co-filed by state Rep. Sean Garballey, with the Senate counterpart filed by state Sen. Jason Lewis — seems to have a few key advantages.
