Today, Congresswoman Maxine Waters (D-CA), the top Democrat on the House Financial Services Committee, announced the introduction of a bill to increase transparency in Artificial Intelligence technology (AI). This bill requires relevant banking and market regulators to study and review the current data labeling practices on tools, products, and services that use AI and make recommendations based on these practices to Congress. By labeling the origin of data, used to train AI systems, consumers can recognize how AI is being used to make a specific decision, the quality of such data, and how their data may be used in the process. 

“As AI advances, Congress must do its part to ensure that fairness and transparency remain front and center,” said Ranking Member Waters. “By now, we know that the training data used for various AI tools, products, and services can have real-world impacts on the lives of Americans, including determining housing outcomes, financial well-being, and more. My bill will make sure that the data used to train these AI models are accurate, do not result in discriminatory outcomes, and respects the privacy of our nation’s consumers. Through these efforts, we can work toward establishing a standardized label on AI systems – similar to a nutrition label – that will tell consumers all they need to know about the data being used to inform recommendations. I look forward to getting this bill across the finish line.”

Specifically, this bill: 

• Requires the financial regulators, including the Federal Reserve, Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation, Office of the Comptroller of the Currency, National Credit Union Administration, and the Securities and Exchange Commission, to carry out a study on how the companies they oversee categorize AI data and train AI models. 
  
  

• Directs each agency to issue a report to Congress containing the findings from the study and recommendations on whether additional rules and regulations should be issued with regard to AI disclosures and labels. 
  

• Allows each agency to require the companies they oversee to report on the data used to train their AI. 

This bill follows the years-long work Congresswoman Waters started by creating the first ever Congressional Task Force on AI, to explore AI in our nation’s housing and financial services system. This Task Force held nearly a dozen hearings to examine the benefits and dangers of AI to ensure that this technology does not advance beyond our ability to regulate it, worsen existing inequities, and harm or abuse consumers.

Read the full text of the bill HERE.