Washington, DC (February 8, 2024) –EBG Advisors, the consulting arm of national law firm Epstein Becker Green, has been selected by the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) to serve as an inaugural participant in the organization’s U.S. AI Safety Institute Consortium (AISIC).
In a launch announcement, NIST stated that the AISIC will “contribute to priority actions outlined in President Biden’s landmark Executive Order, including developing guidelines for red-teaming, capability evaluations, risk management, safety and security, and watermarking synthetic content.”
NIST, a non-regulatory agency within the U.S. Department of Commerce, released the widely accepted AI Risk Management Framework in 2023 and has been monumental in developing methods and standards to better manage the risks to individuals, organizations, and society associated with artificial intelligence (AI). Members of the AISIC include Fortune 500 companies, academic teams, non-profit organizations, and other U.S. Government agencies.
“One cannot underplay NIST’s crucial role in driving momentum around the development of essential benchmarks that promote the safe usage of AI at points of important decision-making across an organization,” said Bradley Merrill Thompson, Member of the Firm at Epstein Becker Green and Chief Data Scientist at EBG Advisors. “When misapplied, AI-powered tools can result in real adverse effects for both the algorithm administrator and its target populations. We are proud to have been selected by NIST to engage in a collaborative effort to mitigate and minimize these harms through the newly established AISIC.”
The launch of the AISIC comes at a timely moment in AI regulatory interest, as health care entities prepare for the release of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services Office for Civil Rights final rule implementing Section 1557 of the Affordable Care Act, which may state that covered entities may not discriminate in their health programs and activities through the use of clinical algorithms in decision-making.
EBG Advisors recently announced an algorithmic bias auditing and risk management initiative with two new additions to its national network: Mosaic Data Science, a leading data science consulting company, and Ethics Through Analytics, a group of social scientists.
Epstein Becker Green has advised clients on AI systems for many years and has been involved in more than 200 health care and labor or employment projects involving AI. Learn more about Epstein Becker Green’s AI services.
