USA – ICT and electronics sector

Section III: Additional National Action Plan Commitments
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Technology (p.25-29)

“As a leader in scientific development, technological progress, and business innovation, the United States plays a critical role in advancing respect for democracy and human rights in the design, development, governance, and use of technology and continues to work to advance an open, interoperable, secure, and reliable Internet. Through our engagement with businesses and with multilateral and multistakeholder initiatives, the USG can further a free, open, and secure digital ecosystem aligned with respect for democratic principles and human rights, while countering the misuse of technology globally from artificial intelligencepowered mass surveillance and censorship at scale to violations of privacy through targeted cyber intrusions without proper safeguards or legal authorities. The following commitments leverage diplomatic tools and initiatives to strengthen respect for democracy and human rights in the technology sector.

Table 4: Technology Commitments

The Department of State will lead an interagency task force to drive outreach to international partners on issues regarding content authenticity and provenance. The task force will build on diplomatic efforts to internationalize the U.S. voluntary commitments to ensure safe, secure, and trustworthy AI and to solidify broad global consensus on an international approach to AI technologies. State will lead the task force to accomplish the following objectives:

1. Develop and promote a global norm for countries to detect AI-generated synthetic content and label authentic government-produced content;
2. Discuss and develop mechanisms to share information and best practices on content authentication and synthetic content detection, leveraging existing platforms and dialogue structures;
3. Advance support for developing countries and civil society to conduct content authentication and provenance, including providing technical consultations, exchanges, and assistance;
4. Encourage engagement by foreign partners in the U.S. Department of Commerce’s (“Commerce’s”) process around standards, tools, methods, and practices for content authentication, identification, and labelling, as well as preventing the use of AI models to generate nonconsensual intimate images; and
5. Support engagement with international standards bodies to encourage a common global content authentication standard.

USAID will launch a five-year Advancing Digital Democracy (ADD) program in 2024. The program will strengthen rights-respecting digital ecosystems to promote the use of technology and data to advance rather than undermine democratic values and human rights. A key objective for ADD is to increase the extent to which human rights considerations are embedded in the design, development, deployment, use, and procurement of digital technologies. To achieve this key objective, ADD will support multistakeholder approaches that strengthen networks among government, civil society, academia, technology professional associations, consumer rights groups, and local private sectors and increase their capacity and resources to grow rights-respecting digital economies in USAID partner countries.

The National Telecommunications and Information Administration (NTIA), a bureau within Commerce, will publish a report on creating mechanisms for earned trust in AI systems. NTIA published a Request for Comment in 2023 and is using this feedback and discussions with stakeholders to write the report. The report will address audits, assessments, certifications, and other mechanisms that can help provide assurance an AI system is trustworthy.

The Department of State will internationalize efforts related to responsible government design, development, use, procurement, and deployment of AI through multistakeholder and multilateral initiatives. State will engage with the Freedom Online Coalition (FOC) to develop a pledge on responsible government development, use, and procurement of AI and will work with FOC members to develop new workstreams to promote knowledge-sharing among member governments to operationalize responsible AI principles. State will also continue to engage with the various regional and international organizations active in those efforts, including the International Telecommunication Union and its AI for Good platform-related efforts, as well as the UN Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO), including UNESCO’s implementation efforts in the public and private sectors for its Recommendation on the Ethics of AI to help advance human rights-based approaches to the development of AI systems and mitigate potential risks of the misuse of AI, including in procurement.

The Department of State will designate staff as human rights and technology officers to increase engagement at key multilateral fora, as part of related State and U.S. interagency workstreams, and at bilateral cyberspace and digital policy dialogues. These officers will advance innovative development, application, and rights-based governance of AI systems and other technologies.

The Department of State will further implementation of the Export Controls and Human Rights Initiative Code of Conduct (“Code”). State will lead a multilateral discussion with Subscribing States to further identify, define, and share best practices in implementing the UNGPs as part of the Code.

The Department of State, in consultation with relevant interagency partners, will lead development of guidance to encourage investors to conduct HRDD when considering investments in technologies that could enable or exacerbate human rights abuses. State, in consultation with civil society, including labor organizations, and private equity and venture capital investors, will develop guidance to discuss downstream risk factors associated with the misuse of technology, potential safeguards throughout the product lifecycle, how investors can influence business decisions in companies whose technologies have been proven to enable human rights abuses if used improperly, and best practices in conducting HRDD.

The Department of State will designate a labor and AI expert to increase engagement on the impact of AI throughout labor-related workstreams. The expert will consult with regional and functional teams on opportunities to increase attention to the impact of AI on internationally recognized labor rights, workplace safety, worker well-being, and labor rights issues arising within the AI value chain such as in data labeling and content moderation across multiple State workstreams.

The Department of State, in its implementation of the U.S. Strategy to Prevent and Respond to Gender-Based Violence Globally, will engage with the private sector to identify solutions to technology-facilitated gender-based violence (TFGBV) through the Global Partnership for Action on Gender-Based Online Harassment and Abuse (“Global Partnership”). The Global Partnership focuses its work on three strategic objectives: advance national, regional, and multilateral policies; scale programming and resources; and strengthen the evidence base for preventing and responding to TFGBV. The Global Partnership will engage the private sector, including technology platforms, through expansion of its multistakeholder Advisory Group and through a series of dialogues to increase shared understanding of and identify solutions to TFGBV in line with the Global Partnership’s three strategic objectives.

The Department of State will launch a new program, “Safe Online: Empowering Women in the Digital Economy,” to address risks of TFGBV facing women in business and the obstacles to women’s inclusion in the digital economy in Armenia and Georgia. In partnership with local organizations in each country, the program will encourage governments and private companies to implement online TFGBV and sexual harassment policies to improve the enabling environment for women in business. This program is supported by the Gender Equity and Equality Action Fund.

The Department of State will work with Treasury to convene an interagency working group to strengthen human rights safeguards that apply to multilateral development bank funded telecommunications infrastructure projects.

The Department of State will engage with Internet Service Providers (ISPs) on best practices for how ISPs can mitigate risks of Internet shutdowns. These best practices will be developed through a multistakeholder group focused on network restrictions or disruptions and will be promoted multilaterally.

The Department of State is releasing U.S. Guidance for Online Platforms on Protecting HRDs. The USG, building upon joint guidance released with the European Union through the U.S.-EU Trade and Technology Council, is publishing detailed guidance for online platforms on how companies can effectively collaborate and coordinate with civil society and other relevant stakeholders to identify, address, mitigate, prevent, and enable access to remedies for online threats and attacks against HRDs.

The Department of Labor will explore the effects of the digitalization of the labor market on workers’ rights and identify best practices for companies to address negative impacts. Digitalization of the labor market holds significant potential to increase productivity, safety, and accessibility for workers but also presents potential risks for workers, including algorithmic bias and non-transparency surrounding automated systems. DOL will engage in efforts to identify best practices for companies to understand and address these impacts, such as adopting measures for companies to provide relevant information to workers on company use of automated systems and promoting among companies the creation of communication channels where workers and their representatives across enterprises can exchange information on the use of automated systems in the world of work.”