New Study Proposes Creation of Data Rights Associations to Counteract AI Abuses

In order to protect Americans from threats posed by artificial intelligence, people should be able to join associations to protect their digital rights, according to the Institute for Family Studies’ new report.

“AI threatens to disempower American families and communities, in large part, because those bedrock institutions lack a voice in shaping AI’s course of development and its governance,” the report, led by Institute for Family Studies senior fellow Daniel Cochrane, writes. “Consequently, the incentives of tech corporations are often fundamentally out of step with those.”

As a result, individuals, households, civil society institutions, and small enterprises should be able to join or form new intermediaries, called Data Rights Associations, to secure terms governing data collection and use from tech corporations, the institute argues.

Data rights associations could “level the playing field between the techno-elites and the communities most directly impacted,” Cochrane says.

“Rather than merely reacting, communities could have a seat at the table and help to shape the future,” the report says. “Whether that future is marked by human flourishing or misery depends on the decisions we make today.”

Data rights associations could protect three interests of individuals: privacy, control, and the right to share in the economic benefits derived from co-produced data.

According to the institute, AI is a “co-produced good,” meaning data of families and communities is used. Thus, governance of the systems and outputs it produces should be shared by co-producers.

“Congress and the States should empower co-producers, through a new right of digital association and collective informational bargaining, to secure terms from tech corporations that advance community-specific privacy, control, and economic interests,” the authors say.