Brown University researchers launch AI legislation tracking and analysis portal

PROVIDENCE, R.I. Brown University researchers have launched the CNTR AISLE Portal, a public database that aggregates AI legislation pending at the federal level and from all 50 states. The portal provides analysis by trained evaluators on the policy aspects covered by the bills. It was developed by faculty, students and staff at the Center for Technological Responsibility, Reimagination and Redesign, or CNTR, a project in Brown's Data Science Institute. The AISLE team wrote that more than 1,000 AI-related bills have been introduced in the U.S. over the last three years. The portal draws its bill library from LegiScan and offers a searchable and sortable collection. A policy team of 17 undergraduates and five graduate students has evaluated a subset of the bills. Evaluators apply a framework of 159 questions that assess coverage of six categories: accountability and transparency, data protection, bias and discrimination, education, synthetic content and the labor force. Each evaluated bill receives a profile that shows the percentage of questions answered in the affirmative for each category. The profile also includes a graphic of the bill's areas of impact. The team has evaluated around 100 bills and plans to add more analyses on a rolling basis. Suresh Venkatasubramanian, a professor of computer science and data science who leads CNTR, said the standards are objective. The goal is to let users see what topics each bill covers without the team judging which bills are good or bad, Venkatasubramanian said. Tomo Lazovich, an assistant professor who leads the policy team, said the portal could help legislators examine how other states address similar issues. Wilber Sean Anterola, a first-year undergraduate on the team, said the project has expanded his perspective on tech policy. The team has already used a preliminary version of the framework to produce insights included in a January report issued with the American Civil Liberties Union. The portal is intended to help policymakers, journalists, researchers and the public identify trends and assess proposal maturity, the AISLE team said. The CNTR project plans to add new features in the coming weeks.