Sec. 5301. National Institute of Standards and Technology activities
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As part of the Initiative, the Director of the National Institute of Standards and Technology shall— support measurement research and development of best practices and voluntary standards for trustworthy artificial intelligence systems, including for— privacy and security, including for datasets used to train or test artificial intelligence systems and software and hardware used in artificial intelligence systems; advanced computer chips and hardware designed for artificial intelligence systems; data management and techniques to increase the usability of data, including strategies to systematically clean, label, and standardize data into forms useful for training artificial intelligence systems and the use of common, open licenses; safety and robustness of artificial intelligence systems, including assurance, verification, validation, security, control, and the ability for artificial intelligence systems to withstand unexpected inputs and adversarial attacks; auditing mechanisms and benchmarks for accuracy, transparency, verifiability, and safety assurance for artificial intelligence systems; applications of machine learning and artificial intelligence systems to improve other scientific fields and engineering; model documentation, including performance metrics and constraints, measures of fairness, training and testing processes, and results; system documentation, including connections and dependences within and between systems, and complications that may arise from such connections; and all other areas deemed by the Director to be critical to the development and deployment of trustworthy artificial intelligence; produce curated, standardized, representative, secure, and privacy protected data sets for artificial intelligence research, development, and use, prioritizing data for high-value, high-risk research; support one or more institutes as described in section 5201(a) for the purpose of advancing the field of artificial intelligence; support and strategically engage in the development of voluntary consensus standards, including international standards, through open, transparent, and consensus-based processes; taking into account the findings from the National Academies study in section 5105, develop taxonomies and lexica to describe artificial intelligence tasks, knowledge, skills, abilities, competencies, and work roles to guide career development, education, and training activities in industry, academia, nonprofit organizations, and the Federal government, identify workforce gaps in the public and private sector, and create criteria and measurement for credentials in artificial intelligence-related careers; and enter into and perform such contracts, including cooperative research and development arrangements and grants and cooperative agreements or other transactions, as may be necessary in the conduct of the work of the National Institute of Standards and Technology and on such terms as the Director considers appropriate, in furtherance of the purposes of this division.
Not later than 2 years after the date of the enactment of this Act, the Director shall work to develop, and periodically update, in collaboration with other public and private sector organizations, including the National Science Foundation and the Department of Energy, a voluntary risk management framework for the trustworthiness of artificial intelligence systems. The framework shall— identify and provide standards, guidelines, best practices, methodologies, procedures, and processes for assessing the trustworthiness of, and mitigating risks to, artificial intelligence systems; establish common definitions and characterizations for aspects and levels of trustworthiness, including explainability, transparency, safety, privacy, security, robustness, fairness, bias, ethics, validation, verification, interpretability, and other properties related to artificial intelligence systems that are common across all sectors; provide guidance and implementation steps for risk management of artificial intelligence systems; provide sector-specific case studies of implementation of the framework; align with voluntary consensus standards, including international standards, to the fullest extent possible; incorporate voluntary consensus standards and industry best practices; and not prescribe or otherwise require— the use of specific solutions; or the use of specific information or communications technology products or services.
Not later than 1 year after the date of enactment of this Act, the Director shall, in collaboration with other public and private sector organizations, develop guidance to facilitate the creation of voluntary data sharing arrangements between industry, federally funded research centers, and Federal agencies for the purpose of advancing artificial intelligence research and technologies, including— options for partnership models between government entities, industry, universities, and nonprofits that incentivize each party to share the data they collected; and best practices for datasets used to train artificial intelligence systems, including— standards for metadata that describe the properties of datasets, including— the origins of the data; the intent behind the creation of the data; authorized uses of the data; descriptive characteristics of the data, including what populations are included and excluded from the datasets; and any other properties as determined by the Director; and standards for privacy and security of datasets with human characteristics.
In carrying out the activities under this subsection, the Director shall— solicit input from university researchers, private sector experts, relevant Federal agencies, Federal laboratories, State and local governments, civil society groups, and other relevant stakeholders; solicit input from experts in relevant fields of social science, technology ethics, and law; and provide opportunity for public comment on guidelines and best practices developed as part of the Initiative, as appropriate.
There are authorized to be appropriated to the National Institute of Standards and Technology to carry out this section $64,000,000 for fiscal year 2021.