The Download: harmful AI, and a deadlier monkeypox variant

That was the response from AI policy and ethics wonks to news last week that the White House's science and technology advisory agency had unveiled an AI Bill of Rights. The document is Biden's vision of how the US government, technology companies, and citizens should work together to hold the AI sector accountable. The US has so far been one of the only Western nations without clear guidance on how to protect its citizens against AI harms--covering everything from wrongful arrests, suicides, and entire cohorts of schoolchildren being marked unjustly by an algorithm, and that's just for starters. The AI Bill of Rights is missing some pretty important areas of harm, such as law enforcement and worker surveillance. And unlike the actual US Bill of Rights, the AI Bill of Rights is more an enthusiastic recommendation than a binding law, which experts worry won't be fully adequate to hold errant tech companies to account.