December 7, 2023 — On December 6, Data & Society Executive Director Janet Haven addressed the bipartisan AI Insight Forum in a session focused on “risk, alignment, and guarding against doomsday scenarios.” She emphasized to US senators that the best way to address the theoretical risks of AI in the future is to address the ways AI is harming Americans now. 

In her written statement, Haven laid out principles for an enforceable framework of safety and rights protection. “Congress should draw on best practices and recent landmark government approaches, mandating the enforceable structures to mitigate AI’s current and known harms through robust accountability, transparency, protection of civil rights, data protection requirements, and the option not to use AI,” she wrote. “These approaches help solve the problems of today, and they position us to have more control in shaping the wide range of futures before us — and to interrogate novel risks as they arise with expertise, experience, and empirical rigor.”