Artificial Intelligence and Automated Systems Legal Update (2Q21)

After a busy start to the year, regulatory and policy developments related to Artificial Intelligence and Automated Systems ("AI") have continued apace in the second quarter of 2021. Unlike the comprehensive regulatory framework proposed by the European Union ("EU") in April 2021,[1] more specific regulatory guidelines in the U.S. are still being proposed on an agency-by-agency basis. President Biden has so far sought to amplify the emerging U.S. AI strategy by continuing to grow the national research and monitoring infrastructure kick-started by the 2019 Trump Executive Order[2] and remain focused on innovation and competition with China in transformative innovations like AI, superconductors, and robotics. Most recently, the U.S. Innovation and Competition Act of 2021--sweeping, bipartisan R&D and science-policy legislation--moved rapidly through the Senate. While there has been no major shift away from the previous "hands off" regulatory approach at the federal level, we are closely monitoring efforts by the federal government and enforcers such as the FTC to make fairness and transparency central tenets of U.S. AI policy.