Today, the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund, Inc. (LDF) submitted written testimony to the New York City Council Committee on Technology’s hearing concerning the ethical implications of using artificial intelligence and automated decision systems (ADS). The testimony urged the council to:
Earlier this year, LDF joined more than 25 civil rights, employment, and privacy organizations in introducing principles to guide the development, use, auditing, and oversight of hiring assessment technologies. The groups urged policymakers, vendors, and employers to protect the civil rights of working people by ensuring new assessment tools that rely on algorithms and artificial intelligence do not further entrench decades of discrimination. Without guardrails in place, new assessments threaten to perpetuate unjust hiring practices based on race, ethnicity, sex, disability, age, and other factors.
Read LDF’s testimony here.
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Founded in 1940, the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund, Inc. (LDF) is the nation’s first civil and human rights law organization. LDF has been completely separate from the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) since 1957—although LDF was originally founded by the NAACP and shares its commitment to equal rights. LDF’s Thurgood Marshall Institute is a multi-disciplinary and collaborative hub within LDF that launches targeted campaigns and undertakes innovative research to shape the civil rights narrative. In media attributions, please refer to us as the NAACP Legal Defense Fund or LDF. Follow LDF on Twitter, Instagram and Facebook.