Blueprint for an AI Bill of Rights
In plain wordsA 2022 White House document listing five protections Americans should have when automated systems affect their lives — safety, fairness, privacy, explanation and a human alternative. It was guidance, not law.
A non-binding framework published by the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy (OSTP) on October 4, 2022, setting out five principles for automated systems whose use could meaningfully affect people's civil rights, their chances in areas such as jobs, housing and credit, or their access to services such as health care and public benefits: safe and effective systems; protection from algorithmic discriminationalgorithmic bias, n.: Unfairness in software that judges or serves people: it consistently produces worse results for some groups, such as women, older people or ethnic minorities, often because it learned from skewed or incomplete records.; data privacy; notice and explanation; and human alternatives, consideration and fallback. A technical companion, 'From Principles to Practice', described expected practices such as pre-deployment testing, disparate impactdisparate impact, n.: When a rule or system that treats everyone alike on paper still lands much harder on one group, such as women or older workers; the law can forbid this even if no one intended it. assessment, plain-language notice and the option to reach a human. It created no legal obligations, but it informed later federal policy, including Executive Order 14110Executive Order 14110, prop. n.: A sweeping 2023 order by US President Joe Biden that told federal agencies how to manage AI risks and required makers of the largest AI models to report their safety tests to the government. It was revoked in 2025. and 2024 Office of Management and Budget rules on agencies' use of AI, and many state bills on automated decision-makingautomated decision-making, n.: When a computer system, rather than a person, makes or effectively makes a decision about someone — such as approving credit, screening job applicants or flagging possible welfare fraud.. It lost official standing with the change of administration in January 2025, when it was moved to the archived Biden White House website, and it plays no part in the Trump administration's AI policy.
The vendor's notice-and-explanation practices were modeled on the Blueprint for an AI Bill of Rights.
Origin
Announced in an October 2021 Wired op-ed by OSTP director Eric Lander and deputy director Alondra Nelson calling for a bill of rights for an AI-powered world, followed by a year of public listening sessions. Drafting was led by Nelson; the document was released on October 4, 2022.
Usage note
Often contrasted with the voluntary, industry-oriented NIST AI Risk Management FrameworkNIST AI Risk Management Framework, prop. n.: A free, voluntary guide from the US government's standards agency that helps organizations spot, measure and reduce the risks of the AI systems they build or use. (2023). Critics variously called it toothless or feared it foreshadowed heavy regulation.
Related
- algorithmic accountabilityalgorithmic accountability, n.: The idea that the people and organizations behind automated decision systems must be able to explain and justify those systems' effects, answer for the harm they cause, and fix it.
- automated decision-makingautomated decision-making, n.: When a computer system, rather than a person, makes or effectively makes a decision about someone — such as approving credit, screening job applicants or flagging possible welfare fraud.
- right to explanationright to explanation, n.: The idea that a person affected by a decision made or shaped by an algorithm — a refused loan, a rejected job application — is entitled to a meaningful account of why.
- Executive Order 14110Executive Order 14110, prop. n.: A sweeping 2023 order by US President Joe Biden that told federal agencies how to manage AI risks and required makers of the largest AI models to report their safety tests to the government. It was revoked in 2025.
- NIST AI Risk Management FrameworkNIST AI Risk Management Framework, prop. n.: A free, voluntary guide from the US government's standards agency that helps organizations spot, measure and reduce the risks of the AI systems they build or use.
- algorithmic biasalgorithmic bias, n.: Unfairness in software that judges or serves people: it consistently produces worse results for some groups, such as women, older people or ethnic minorities, often because it learned from skewed or incomplete records.
Sources
- White House Office of Science and Technology Policy (2022). Blueprint for an AI Bill of Rights: Making Automated Systems Work for the American People.
Mentioned in
Executive Order 14110Executive Order 14110, prop. n.: A sweeping 2023 order by US President Joe Biden that told federal agencies how to manage AI risks and required makers of the largest AI models to report their safety tests to the government. It was revoked in 2025., right to explanationright to explanation, n.: The idea that a person affected by a decision made or shaped by an algorithm — a refused loan, a rejected job application — is entitled to a meaningful account of why.