Last month, Senator Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) led a bipartisan team of policymakers to introduce the AI Whistleblower Protection Act. The bill would prohibit retaliation against workers in the AI industry who raise the alarm about failures in AI safety or security.
The AI Whistleblower Protection Act is an example of good AI governance. It recognizes that current whistleblower protections do not extend to the AI industry and levels the playing field by bringing whistleblower protections in the AI industry in line with other industries. This kind of approach to AI governance can incentivize responsible development better than paperwork-heavy regulatory regimes that fester in the states. After all, consumers reap the benefits of innovation, and whistleblower protections are a sensible step to keep that innovation safe for everyone.
Federal government employed whistleblowers are protected under the Whistleblower Protection Act of 1989—but those protections do not protect employees in the AI industry from retaliation. What little protection that exists has been pieced together industry-by-industry, with little protection for those working directly in the field of artificial intelligence. Besides, those laws mainly concern fraud, employee health, and safety anyway—not violations in security or federal law during development.
Consider a 2024 letter where AI whistleblowers explained that “ordinary whistleblower protections are insufficient because they focus on illegal activity, whereas many of the risks we are concerned with are not yet regulated.” Better policy would extend protections to employees in the AI industry by prohibiting retaliation against current or past employees for reporting security vulnerabilities or AI safety concerns during development.
Additional federal protections for workers in the AI industry specifically would not be amiss. Although states should be cognizant of patchwork concerns generally, federal lawmakers can and must promote responsible development practices by addressing clear harms directly, thereby avoiding heavy-handed mandates. Other general-purpose technologies are also regulated individually for their unique risks, including finance, transportation, and utilities, regardless of how their products are used or misused down the line. Fortunately, an AI-specific law would fit in neatly with other whistleblower protections and give AI experts a needed defense.
The AI Whistleblower Protection Act borrows enforcement methods from existing whistleblower laws. Its proposed methods for relief include reinstating individuals to their positions, paying the whistleblower double the backpay, and/or appropriate compensatory damages. Importantly, these are the same penalties and remedies that businesses in other industries already face. Plus, there are no additional preemptive paperwork schemes that would balloon compliance costs and slow down innovation.
The AI Whistleblower Protection Act stands to promote responsible AI development more effectively than heavy-handed AI legislation. Compare this to Colorado’s AI consumer protections law, for example. With a myriad of paperwork requirements and a framework prioritizing risk aversion over progress, Colorado’s law threatens to slow down AI innovation, especially from AI developers that are too small to adequately absorb these regulatory costs. The risk of harm to developers has led to efforts to delay the law from taking effect—delays that even the Governor and the law’s original authors support.
The AI Whistleblower Protection Act, on the other hand, would keep the government out of the way and only intervene in limited, harmful circumstances. Such a framework allows for continued innovation while empowering informed industry experts to hold businesses accountable from the bottom up.
The combination of freedom to innovate and internal course corrections promises a wealth of benefits to consumers—especially if whistleblower protections prove to be as effective in the AI industry as they are elsewhere. Research finds that whistleblowers are more than twice as effective as external auditors at detecting fraud. Further analysis finds that whistleblowers are instrumental in protecting consumers’ tax dollars from waste, as they helped the government recover “over $1.6 billion in False Claims Act settlements” in 2020. Where fraud is curtailed and businesses bring more and better products to market, consumers win.
Many existing laws already enshrine whistleblower protections, but they fail to include AI developers and their industry-specific issues. Extending protection to AI experts can encourage responsible development without imposing heavy-handed reporting requirements. This approach can safeguard both innovation and consumers. While the federal government continues to develop its approach towards AI governance, protecting experts from workplace retaliation is a good first step in fostering consumer-safe artificial intelligence innovation.
Nate Karren is a policy analyst with the American Consumer Institute, a nonprofit education and research organization. For more information about the Institute, follow us on X @ConsumerPal.