As part of an ongoing effort to support the development of trustworthy and responsible artificial intelligence (AI), the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) has announced that it has revised its publication entitled, Towards a Standard for Identifying and Managing Bias in Artificial Intelligence (NIST Special Publication 1270), which reflects public comments the agency received on its draft version released last summer.
The publication revision offers guidance connected to the AI Risk Management Framework that NIST is developing. The main distinction between the draft and final versions of the publication is the new emphasis on how bias manifests itself not only in AI algorithms and the data used to train them, but also in the societal context in which AI systems are used, according to NIST’s Reva Schwartz, who serves as the principal investigator for AI bias and is co-author of the publication.
“AI systems do not operate in isolation. They help people make decisions that directly affect other people’s lives. If we are to develop trustworthy AI systems, we need to consider all the factors that can chip away at the public’s trust in AI,” said Schwartz. “Many of these factors go beyond the technology itself to the impacts of the technology, and the comments we received from a wide range of people and organizations emphasized this point.”
Join NIST’s Workshops on AI Bias
NIST has also announced that it will host a series of public workshops over the next few months aimed at drafting a technical report for addressing AI bias and connecting the report with the AI Risk Management Framework. For more information and to register for the first March 29-31 event, visit the AI RMF workshop page and view the recent NIST news article on the publication’s revision.
ANSI Supports AI in Healthcare
Continue to track ANSI’s efforts that support AI efforts and progress in AI standardization. In November and December 2021, ANSI’s virtual workshops focused on data standardization as building blocks with AI in healthcare was intended to launch work to coordinate and accelerate standardization enabling AI in healthcare.
ANSI’s 2021 report, "Standardization Empowering AI-Enabled Systems in Healthcare," reflects feedback from an ANSI leadership survey and national workshop, and identifies opportunities for standardization to support data, trust, transparency, governance frameworks, and risk management in this rapidly-growing area.
See related news: NIST Requests Information to Help Develop an AI Risk Management Framework