California Governor Gavin Newsom’s Executive Order N-12-23 on Generative Artificial Intelligence (“GenAI”) directs the creation of guidelines for state agencies and departments to analyze the impact of GenAI on vulnerable communities in California. The Samuelson Clinic drafted a comment for the American Civil Liberties Union responding to this Executive Order.
The comment makes four recommendations. First, the guidelines should apply to any automated systems impacting the lives of Californians, not just GenAI. Second, the guidelines should adopt a decision-making standard that incorporates community input and an AI impact assessment, as well as require that agencies determine whether the public benefits of a technology outweigh its potential harms before deployment. Third, the guidelines should prohibit the procurement and use of technologies that pose an unacceptable risk to vulnerable communities, such as facial recognition, biometric surveillance, predictive policing, emotion-detection, and criminal justice use. Finally, although the guidelines cannot bind local agencies, the comment asks the Governor’s Office to explore assisting local agencies that voluntarily seek to adhere to the guidelines.
Adopting these recommendations would help state agencies thoughtfully consider AI’s risks in their efforts to use AI to address systemic challenges and improve the lives of Californians.