We need a Belmont report for AI

Abstract The Belmont Report has a place of great importance in American biomedical research ethics. This paper argues that a similar kind of report, and the legal infrastructure that birthed it, is needed in the United States if we are to preempt a great many of the potential issues that are on the horizon with artificial intelligence (AI). What makes the Belmont Report so important is not just that it established a new basis for how medical professionals ought to treat their patients and experiment participants; it did so with the force of law. Establishing an equivalent legal framework for AI is going to take tremendous buy-in from a variety of private and public actors in the United States. The model afforded by the Belmont Report is well suited to generate such buy-in. While this may seem like a daunting task given various polarizing issues at play in society today, the context that produced the Belmont Report was quite fractious itself. It is the position of this paper that a similarly styled approach to AI regulation can succeed in proactively limiting the harms of AI’s use (and abuse).