Engaging with Lawmakers, Business Leaders to Promote AI Safety

The Northwestern Center for Advancing Safety of Machine Intelligence (CASMI) is engaging with lawmakers and business leaders as it educates the public about the impact of artificial intelligence (AI) technologies.

Kristian Hammond, Bill and Cathy Osborn Professor of Computer Science and director of CASMI, led an AI briefing on March 18 for the Chicagoland Chamber of Commerce. Additionally, Hammond and Daniel W. Linna Jr., senior lecturer at Northwestern Engineering and the Pritzker School of Law, briefed a group of Illinois House Cybersecurity and Judiciary Civil committee members on Feb. 14 at Northwestern. CASMI is also producing a YouTube series exploring the impact of AI, considering safety and harm.

All of these efforts are part of CASMI’s mission to identify and remove harms caused by machine technologies.

“We need to communicate with people who are making regulations and help them understand the reality of what they're regulating,” Hammond said. “We need to communicate with people in the business world who are making decisions about how to deploy these technologies so that they understand the issues of harm and safety. And we need to communicate with consumers so that they can make informed decisions and so that they can understand exactly where the harms are in the world so that they can avoid them.”