ForHumanity
ForHumanity (https://forhumanity.center/) is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization dedicated to addressing the Ethics, Bias, Privacy, Trust, and Cybersecurity in artificial intelligence and autonomous systems. ForHumanity uses an open and transparent process that draws from a pool of over 390+ international contributors to construct audit criteria, certification schemes, and educational programs for legal and compliance professionals, educators, auditors, developers, and legislators to mitigate bias, enhance ethics, protect privacy, build trust, improve cybersecurity, and drive accountability and transparency in AI and autonomous systems. ForHumanity works to make AI safe for all people and makes itself available to support government agencies and instrumentalities to manage risk associated with AI and autonomous systems.
Role on Independent Audit of AI and Autonomous Systems
IAAIS provides a comprehensive solution grounded in the same fundamental principles as Independent Financial Audit. ForHumanity develops and maintains audit and certification criteria designed for a range of industries and jurisdictions.
The proposed system replicates the distributed oversight, accountability and governance needed for AI and autonomous systems in the same manner as financial audit, through audit and pre-audit service providers. These entities will employ certified practitioners to prepare for an eventual independent audit performed by other certified practitioners. The audit criteria are presented transparently to maximize an entity’s ability to achieve compliance. Advancements in systems technology allow many of these processes to be automated for entities such as with the Treadway Commissions’ Committee of Sponsoring Organization (COSO) framework for internal risk, audit and controls. The result is a fully-integrated, compliance-by-design infrastructure that embeds human agency, transparency, disclosure and compliance from design to decommission.
The audit criteria are applied in two vectors: 1) Top-down accountability, governance and oversight 2) laterally, AI system by AI system. The top-down approach creates accountability systems for ethics, bias, privacy, trust, and cybersecurity for the Board of Directors, Chief Executive Officer and Chief Data Officer. Committee structures are required such as an Algorithmic Risk, Children’s Data Oversight, and Ethics to manage the audit/compliance responsibilities. All of these top-down criteria apply to every AI and every autonomous system in the organization. The system-specific audit criteria is designed to ensure legal and best practice compliance tailored to the specific impact of each system on humans. This comprehensive approach ensures consistency across the organization combined with complete risk management coverage of each unique system.
