“Sorry, I didn’t quite get that,” rudely interrupts Siri any time the word “seriously” or “series” is mentioned in a conversation.  Many Americans have become accustomed to hearing this voice coming from their pockets, but there was a time when artificial intelligence (AI) seemed like a distant dream, an unreachable fiction, a phenomenon that only existed in movies.  For developers, the rapid growth of AI technologies is exciting—for others, it’s frightening.  Today, AI is everywhere: it talks to us from our phones, it navigates our roadways, and it sends you those “perfectly” targeted advertisements on social media platforms. 

Despite the involvement of AI in our daily lives, the federal government has largely left the field unregulated.  AI has many advantages that include reducing human error and taking on risks that would ordinarily burden humans.  Additionally, AI systems are available at all times of the day, every day of the week, compared to the eight hours most humans work.  They can help expedite the process of tedious and repetitive jobs, and they can make decisions much quicker than humans.  Notwithstanding these benefits, there are many concerns about AI, including human unemployment, its potential to make humans lazy, high costs of innovation, its inability to feel emotions, and a lack of creative thinking.  More significantly, AI has the potential—if left unregulated—to be dangerous to public safety and equality.  

For example, a widely used risk-prediction program in the U.S. healthcare system was found to favor white patients over black patients in determining who would be likely to need extra medical care.  Similarly, an Amazon facial recognition technology, Rekognition, wrongly identified a number of professional athletes as criminals, including Duron Harmon, a professional football player and safety for the New England Patriots.  Since federal agencies and their regulations are often designed to promote equality and safety, these incidents make it clear that there are significant risks with leaving AI technology unregulated.

Proceeding in three parts, this Note draws upon two examples of emerging AI technologies that demonstrate the need for federal regulation: autonomous vehicles (i.e., self-driving cars) and algorithm-based hiring software.