“Against AI Half Measures,” Woodrow Hartzog, Boston University Law School

So far, U.S. policy for artificial intelligence has largely consisted of industry-led approaches like encouraging transparency, mitigating bias, promoting principles of ethics, and empowering people. These approaches are vital, but they are only half measures. To bring AI within the rule of law, lawmakers must start drawing substantive lines. In this talk, I will identify four AI regulatory approaches as half measures. First, transparency does not produce accountability on its own. Next, while mitigating bias in AI systems is critical, even unbiased systems are a threat to the vulnerable. Third, while “AI ethics” are important, they are a poor substitute for laws. Finally, empowering people in their individual choices misses the larger questions about the distribution of power and collective wellbeing. Instead of these half measures, lawmakers should reject the idea that AI systems are neutral and inevitable.  When lawmakers go straight to putting up half-hearted guardrails, they fail to ask the existential question about whether some AI systems should exist at all. To avoid the mistakes of the past, lawmakers must make the hard calls. And AI half measures will certainly not be enough.

Professor Woodrow Hartzog is internationally recognized for his work in privacy and technology law. He has been influential in the debate over privacy and surveillance rules and in the creation and enforcement of information and technology laws. His publications focus on the complex problems that arise when people, organizations, and governments use powerful new technologies to collect, analyze, and share human information.

Professor Hartzog’s work has been published in numerous scholarly publications such as Yale Law Journal, Columbia Law Review, University of Chicago Law Review, California Law Review, Notre Dame Law Review, and Michigan Law Review, and popular national publications such as The Guardian, Wired, BBC, CNN, Bloomberg, New Scientist, Slate, The Atlantic, and The Nation. He has testified multiple times before Congress on data protection issues and served as a commissioner on the Massachusetts Special Commission on Facial Recognition. He is the author of "Privacy’s Blueprint: The Battle to Control the Design of New Technologies," (Harvard University Press, 2018) and the co-author of "Breached! Why Data Security Law Fails and How to Improve It," (Oxford University Press, 2022) with Daniel Solove.