The first attempts to regulate artificial intelligence programs that play a hidden role in hiring, housing and medical decisions for millions of Americans are facing pressure from all sides and floundering in statehouses nationwide. Only one of seven bills aimed at preventing AI's penchant to discriminate when making consequential decisions -- including who gets hired, money for a home or medical care -- has passed. Colorado Gov. Jared Polis hesitantly signed the bill on Friday. Colorado's bill and those that faltered in Washington, Connecticut and elsewhere faced battles on many fronts, including between civil rights groups and the tech industry, and lawmakers wary of wading into a technology few yet understand and governors worried about being the odd-state-out and spooking AI startups. Polis signed Colorado's bill "with reservations," saying in an statement he was wary of regulations dousing AI innovation.

U.S. senators and technology experts met for the second of Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer's AI Insight Forums Oct. 24. Among the 21 invitees were venture capitalists, academics, civil rights campaigners, and industry figures. The discussion at the second Insight Forum, which was closed to the public, focused on how AI could enable innovation, and the innovation required to ensure that AI progress is safe, according to a press release from Schumer's office. In the previous forum, attended by the CEOs of most of the large tech companies, Schumer asked who agreed that some sort of legislation would be required. This time, he asked for a show of hands to see who agreed whether significant federal funding would be required to support AI innovation. Again, all hands were raised, according to Suresh Venkatasubramanian, a professor of data science and computer science at Brown University, who attended the forum.

The CX and customer service landscape continues to evolve at a rapid pace. According to reports from market leaders like Salesforce, 80% of users consider the experience a company provides to be as important as its products and services. Additionally, 66% of customers expect organizations to understand their needs and actions. To stay ahead in today's competitive landscape, especially in the face of fluctuating economic conditions, businesses must stay ahead of consumer expectations. A clear insight into CX trends by companies could be the key to standing out from the competition in the New Year.

Companies are increasingly adopting automated systems to support, and sometimes even replace, humans in key steps of their hiring and employee management processes. According to Forbes, all Fortune 500 companies report using some form of automation in their HR pipelines. And it's not just large companies that are jumping on this trend: industry surveys have shown that at least 25% of all US-based companies plan to increase their use of automated systems in hiring and talent management over the next few years. From an economic perspective, it's not difficult to understand why companies are embracing automation. Automated systems offer a highly-scalable way to add efficiency to HR, and remove many critical bottlenecks when it comes to identifying and hiring new talent.

Legislation introduced last week would require companies to assess the impact of AI and automated systems they use to make decisions affecting people's employment, finances, housing and more. The Algorithmic Accountability Act of 2022, sponsored by Oregon Democratic Sen. Ron Wyden, would give the FTC more tech staff to oversee enforcement and let the agency publish information about the algorithmic tech that companies use. In fact, it follows an approach to AI accountability and transparency already promoted by key advisers inside the FTC. Algorithms used by social media companies are often the ones in the regulatory spotlight. However, all sorts of businesses -- from home loan providers and banks to job recruitment services -- use algorithmic systems to make automated decisions.

Legislation introduced last week would require companies to assess the impact of AI and automated systems they use to make decisions affecting people's employment, finances, housing and more. The Algorithmic Accountability Act of 2022, sponsored by Oregon Democratic Sen. Ron Wyden, would give the FTC more tech staff to oversee enforcement and let the agency publish information about the algorithmic tech that companies use. In fact, it follows an approach to AI accountability and transparency already promoted by key advisers inside the FTC. Algorithms used by social media companies are often the ones in the regulatory spotlight. However, all sorts of businesses -- from home loan providers and banks to job recruitment services -- use algorithmic systems to make automated decisions. In an effort to enable more oversight and control of technologies that make discriminatory decisions or create safety risks or other harms, the bill would require companies deploying automated systems to assess them, mitigate negative impacts and submit annual reports about those assessments to the FTC.

Democrats in Congress on Thursday renewed a push to hold tech companies accountable for bias in their algorithms. Senators Ron Wyden (D-OR) and Cory Booker (D-NJ), along with House representative Yvette Clarke (D-NY) introduced an updated version of a bill that would require audits of AI systems used in areas such as finance, healthcare, housing, education and more. First introduced by Wyden in 2019, the Algorithmic Accountability Act has never passed the committee level in either the House or Senate. "If someone decides not to rent you a house because of the color of your skin, that's flat-out illegal discrimination. Using a flawed algorithm or software that results in discrimination and bias is just as bad. Our bill will pull back the curtain on the secret algorithms that can decide whether Americans get to see a doctor, rent a house or get into a school," said Wyden in a press release.

The Transform Technology Summits start October 13th with Low-Code/No Code: Enabling Enterprise Agility. Governments face a range of policy challenges around AI technologies, many of which are exacerbated by the fact that they lack sufficiently detailed information. A whitepaper published this week by AI ethicist Jess Whittlestone and former OpenAI policy director Jack Clark outlines a potential solution that involves investing in governments' capacity to monitor the capabilities of AI systems. As the paper points out, AI as an industry routinely creates a range of data and measures, and if the data was synthesized, the insights could improve governments' ability to understand the technologies while helping to create tools to intervene. "Governments should play a central role in establishing measurement and monitoring initiatives themselves while subcontracting out other aspects to third parties, such as through grantmaking, or partnering with research institutions," Whittlestone and Clark wrote.

The European Union proposed rules that would restrict or ban some uses of artificial intelligence within its borders, including by tech giants based in the US and China. The rules are the most significant international effort to regulate AI to date, covering facial recognition, autonomous driving, and the algorithms that drive online advertising, automated hiring, and credit scoring. The proposed rules could help shape global norms and regulations around a promising but contentious technology. "There's a very important message globally, that certain applications of AI are not permissible in a society founded on democracy, rule of law, fundamental rights," says Leufer says the proposed rules are vague, but represent a significant step towards checking potentially harmful uses of the technology. The debate is likely to be watched closely abroad.

In 1964, the Civil Rights Act barred the humans who made hiring decisions from discriminating on the basis of sex or race. Now, software often contributes to those hiring decisions, helping managers screen résumés or interpret video interviews. That worries some tech experts and civil rights groups, who cite evidence that algorithms can replicate or magnify biases shown by people. In 2018, Reuters reported that Amazon scrapped a tool that filtered résumés based on past hiring patterns because it discriminated against women. Legislation proposed in the New York City Council seeks to update hiring discrimination rules for the age of algorithms.