CA Could Force Tech Companies to Disclose AI Training Data

Lea esta historia en Spanish

Democratic congressman Jacqui Irwina former tech insider, is taking on the industry with a sweeping bill that would force artificial intelligence developers to disclose the data they use to “train” their systems.

“Consumer trust in AI systems has not grown at the same rate as industry adoption. » Irwin told a hearing last month. “Many consumers have valid questions about how these AI systems and services are created. »

Irwin’s concern about AI is notable since she is perhaps the Legislature’s foremost expert on the tech industry and, at times, its champion.

As a young engineer at Johns Hopkins University’s Applied Physics Laboratory, she was tasked with troubleshooting launches of the U.S. Navy’s Trident II nuclear missiles, making her the Legislature’s only true rocket scientist.

She is a former engineer for Teledyne Technologiesa global aerospace and technology conglomerate headquartered in Irwin’s hometown of Thousand Oaks.

She co-chairs the California Legislative Caucus on Technology and Innovation and one National Legislative Working Group on AI, Cybersecurity and Privacy.

She was also a favorite of Big Tech, once she wrote laws. that critics accused to weaken digital privacy protections in California on behalf of the tech industry with which it had close family ties. At the time, her husband was the chief operating officer of Amazon-owned Ring.

The prominent pressure group TechNet in 2017 declared her “Legislator of the Year.”

But now TechNet and almost every other lobbying group representing big tech companies opposes his latest legislation, 2013 Assembly Bill. The influential California Chamber of Commerce is also opposed to the bill, which the state Assembly voted 56-8 to move to the Senate last week.

Last month, the House Ronak Daylami told the Assembly Privacy and Consumer Protection Committee, on which Irwin sits, that Irwin’s bill could expose technology companies’ carefully guarded trade secrets.

“Although it may not be obvious at first glance,” Daylami said“the expertise and judgment, as well as the actual selection of data and datasets chosen to train a specific AI model, are themselves proprietary.”

Would disclosure help push back against AI bias?

But Irwin said his bill would give consumers a powerful tool to better understand the emerging technology, which has raised privacy alarms after it was revealed that tech companies were using facial recognition, social media posts and copyrighted material such as artwork And Press articles to train their artificial intelligence software.

Irwin said requiring training data to be disclosed could also help prevent potential bias in AI software decision-making.

She said the issue piqued her interest at a recent meeting of the National Conference of State Legislatures where she heard a group of doctors discussing the use of AI in drug delivery. The problem, she explained, was that it was unclear whether these systems had inherent biases, since companies are not required to disclose the data they used to train their systems.

She wondered: What if it was like a clinical drug trial that tested the drug only on white, suburban men, instead of a diverse group of patients whose bodies might respond differently?

“With these AI medical devices, you really have to know what group they were trained on,” she said.

In more general terms, Hayley Tsukayamaa legislative advocate of Electronic Frontier Foundationcompared disclosure requirements to the ability to read a list of ingredients in a meal.

“The ingredient list is sometimes a lot easier to parse than trying to taste a dish at the end and trying to figure out what’s in it,” she said.

Irwin owns Amazon and tech stocks

The AI ​​disclosure bill is not Irwin’s first foray into regulating the technology since joining the Assembly in 2014.

His office provided what he called a “non-exhaustive” list of 13 other technology and cybersecurity bills authored by Irwin, most of which were passed into law. Some of them have also faced opposition from the tech industry, which has donated at least $288,000 to their campaigns over the years, according to the Digital Democracy Database.

Since 2015, Irwin’s votes have aligned with TechNet’s position on bills 28 percent of the time, according to one report. Digital democracy analysis.

However, his most controversial tech legislation was a 2019 bill that critics said would have weakened the state’s landmark California Consumer Privacy Act. The law gives California legal authority to order tech companies to tell them what personal information they have collected, and customers can ask the companies to delete it and not sell it.

At the time, Irwin’s husband, Jon, was the chief operating officer of Amazon-owned Ring, raising the appearance of a conflict of interest given that the Privacy Act private life regulated the business.

Irwin insisted there was none. She said Politics at the time it was offensive to assume that she was working on behalf of her husband’s company, given her professional experience and expertise.

Jon Irwin has since left Amazon to become COO of CENTEGIXa technology company that manufactures portable emergency alert devices and security systems for schools and other institutions, according to his LinkedIn page.

The assemblyman reported to state ethics officials last year that the family sold Amazon stock, valued at between $300,000 and $3 million. State ethics officials allow lawmakers to report wide ranges of the value of their stock portfolios when they file their annual financial statements.

Irwin’s disclosure documents show she also acquired at least $60,000 in investments in cryptocurrency, AI and semiconductors last year.

In his interview last week with CalMatters, Irwin declined to provide a more specific figure on Amazon’s stock sales or discuss his other recent investments in technology. She said she complied with state ethics disclosure requirements and that her and her husband’s investments were not considered in her decision-making process.

“I make every decision based on what is best for my constituents,” she said. “I don’t need anyone to question what I do, that’s why we are always very careful in every decision.”

Instead, she said she became interested in technology and cybersecurity law because her experience made her a natural fit. And she’s even made it a point to educate her fellow lawmakers about cybersecurity.

“You can talk to any of my colleagues; for the most part, I grabbed their phone and said, “Oh, my God, you know, your phone is tracking you; these apps track you. Let’s turn off tracking devices and do two-step authentication,” she said. “In huddle, I get up and tell people how to make their phones more secure. » ‘

Tsukayama, the legislative attorney for the Electronic Frontier Foundation, said Irwin certainly knows complex technology issues as well, if not better, than anyone in the Legislature, even though the digital consumer rights group s sometimes opposes its legislation.

“We haven’t always agreed with her,” Tsukayama said, “but it’s rarely, you know, because of her poor understanding of how technology works.”

CalMatters Business Reporter Levi Sumagaysay and data journalist Jeremy Kimelman contributed to this story.