iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

ACM Policy Committees @acmpolicy.bsky.social · 07/10/2026

ACM’s U.S. Technology Policy Committee has submitted comments to NIST on its draft TEVV-Athlon Framework. The comments recommend strengthening approaches to testing, evaluating, verifying, and validating AI systems. Read ACM’s comments: buff.ly/0fe7glb #AIGovernance #AI #TechPolicy

acm.org

Comments on NIST’s TEVV-Athlon Framework for Evaluating AI Systems

ACM Technology Policy Committee is supportive of NIST’s effort to develop a framework for the test, evaluation, verification, and validation (TEVV) of AI systems. While high-level, the proposed…

031

ACM Policy Committees @acmpolicy.bsky.social · 02/10/2026

Court settlements keep shaping data privacy one company at a time. Should norms be set that way? ACM's TechBrief on #DataPrivacy: doi.org/10.1145/3679...

001

ACM Policy Committees @acmpolicy.bsky.social · 21/09/2026

The United Nations General Assembly is in full swing this week. What do you think will drive the narrative this week? A safe bet... AI Governance. Check out our recommendations here: www.acm.org/public-polic... #AI #UN

acm.org

Recent ACM Public Policy Products

Public policy statements by ACM and its policy committees.

001

ACM Policy Committees @acmpolicy.bsky.social · 18/09/2026

Voting system security is not optional. ACM's comments to the Election Assistance Commission on Voluntary Voting System Guidelines 2.0: voting infrastructure must be auditable, observable, and resistant to attack. www.acm.org/binaries/con... #TechPolicy #AI #Voting

acm.org

https://www.acm.org/binaries/content/assets/public-policy/europe-tpc/systemic_risks_agentic_ai_policy-brief_final.pdf

031

ACM Policy Committees @acmpolicy.bsky.social · 16/09/2026

Facial recognition is being deployed faster than we can articulate the harms. ACM published principles for responsible facial recognition in 2021. This technology can help and surveil. The principles ask: if you use it, understand the real tradeoffs. www.acm.org/binaries/con...

001

ACM Policy Committees @acmpolicy.bsky.social · 15/09/2026

Agentic systems make decisions faster than humans can audit them. ACM Europe's policy brief on systemic risks from agentic AI asks the hard questions: what oversight actually works when the system operates autonomously? #AI #Agentic Read the brief. www.acm.org/binaries/con...

021

ACM Policy Committees @acmpolicy.bsky.social · 01/09/2026

5/ The same models that patch vulnerabilities can find them for attackers. ACM's new TechBrief on AI's effects on open source, free to read: doi.org/10.1145/3838...

doi.org

https://doi.org/10.1145/3838809

000

ACM Policy Committees @acmpolicy.bsky.social · 01/09/2026

4/ SBOMs are mandated in the US and EU. Most open source releases still don't ship one. And an SBOM won't tell you whether a component is maintained, funded, or abandoned.

100

ACM Policy Committees @acmpolicy.bsky.social · 01/09/2026

3/ AI isn't creating new problems for open source. It's accelerating four old ones: cybersecurity, maintenance, long-term sustainability, and funding that never reached most projects.

110

ACM Policy Committees @acmpolicy.bsky.social · 01/09/2026

2/ Firms would spend 3.5x more on software if open source didn't exist. Estimated demand-side value: $8.8 trillion. This is critical infrastructure, and much of it runs on volunteer labor.

100

ACM Policy Committees @acmpolicy.bsky.social · 01/09/2026

AI can write a patch in seconds. A human maintainer still has to decide whether to accept it. That gap is the open source story of the next five years. New ACM TechBrief 🧵 dl.acm.org/doi/epdf/10....

102

ACM Policy Committees @acmpolicy.bsky.social · 26/08/2026

Europe's layered sovereignty strategy: Transparent supply chains for frontier systems AI Factories as federated trusted environments (not just compute) Proportionate (case-by-case) safeguards for open-weight models International coordination on evaluation & incident response

100

ACM Policy Committees @acmpolicy.bsky.social · 26/08/2026

Meet "cognitive sovereignty"—your capacity to maintain control over your attention, motivation, and decision-making when using AI. Meaningful human oversight doesn't mean rubber-stamping fluent outputs. It means access to alternatives, uncertainty signals, and the right to override.

110

ACM Policy Committees @acmpolicy.bsky.social · 26/08/2026

Most AI governance treats trustworthiness as a compliance layer added after the fact. Wrong move. Instead: Purpose-first design. Ask why you're building a system, whose interests it serves, whether benefits justify risks. Build that into the architecture from day one.

100

ACM Policy Committees @acmpolicy.bsky.social · 26/08/2026

The frontier AI competition isn't won by the biggest computers. It's won by the most trustworthy systems. ACM Europe just released a policy brief reframing Europe's AI strategy—and it's a direct challenge to the "arms race" narrative. 🧵

220

ACM Policy Committees @acmpolicy.bsky.social · 04/08/2026

4/5 And there's no clean line to regulate. In one session, a user may move from fact-seeking prompts to creative ones. No natural delineation exists that's easy to implement.

100

ACM Policy Committees @acmpolicy.bsky.social · 04/08/2026

3/5 The statement also treats steering output as likely deceptive. But guardrails block malware and nonconsensual intimate imagery — and some state laws require them. That isn't ideology.

100

ACM Policy Committees @acmpolicy.bsky.social · 04/08/2026

2/5 The bigger problem isn't ideology. It's confabulation: systems stating things confidently that aren't true. Grounding methods like retrieval-augmented generation help, but aren't infallible.

100

ACM Policy Committees @acmpolicy.bsky.social · 04/08/2026

1/ Consumers accept AI system outputs without any further fact-checking more than 90% of the time. The FTC cites that number in its policy statement on accuracy in AI systems. ACM's US Technology Policy Committee agrees the problem is real — and says the diagnosis is wrong.

100

ACM Policy Committees @acmpolicy.bsky.social · 31/07/2026

Africa needs an estimated 700 additional data centers beyond the roughly 150 already concentrated in South Africa, Kenya, and Nigeria. That scale makes the choices made now, on energy, water, and equitable access, consequential well beyond this decade. www.acm.org/public-polic...

acm.org

Written Submission on the Human Rights Implications of Data Centre and Digital Infrastructure Expansion in South Africa

The Association for Computing Machinery (ACM) welcomes the initiative of the South African Human Rights Commission (“the Commission”) in calling for public submissions on the human rights…

000

ACM Policy Committees @acmpolicy.bsky.social · 30/07/2026

Europe's draft cybersecurity standard for AI systems, prEN 18282, correctly identifies attack surfaces unique to AI: training data, model weights, prompts, and connected tools. ACM's Europe Technology Policy Committee recommends six strengthening measures. www.acm.org/public-polic...

001

ACM Policy Committees @acmpolicy.bsky.social · 29/07/2026

4/ Agentic AI needs clear division of labor: providers design safeguards, deployers configure & monitor them. Neither should let an AI system change its own safety settings unsupervised.

100

ACM Policy Committees @acmpolicy.bsky.social · 29/07/2026

3/ Gap: AI supply-chain security needs its own systematic register, not a line item. Datasets, model weights, and tool connectors all need provenance tracking.

110

ACM Policy Committees @acmpolicy.bsky.social · 29/07/2026

2/ The draft rightly flags AI-specific attack surfaces: training data, model weights, prompts, connected tools. Conventional ICT security standards miss these.

100

ACM Policy Committees @acmpolicy.bsky.social · 29/07/2026

1/ Europe is finalizing its cybersecurity standard for AI systems (prEN 18282). ACM's Europe Technology Policy Committee reviewed the draft and recommends 6 improvements. Thread 🧵

100

ACM Policy Committees @acmpolicy.bsky.social · 28/07/2026

4/ Hosting data in South Africa doesn't guarantee South African legal control. Foreign-owned parent firms can still face outside access demands. Data residency isn't data sovereignty.

100

ACM Policy Committees @acmpolicy.bsky.social · 28/07/2026

3/ ACM's recommendation: tie data center approvals to a "digital-inclusion dividend" — local jobs, skills training, community connectivity, reserved compute for SA researchers & institutions.

100

ACM Policy Committees @acmpolicy.bsky.social · 28/07/2026

2/ Data centers draw heavily on scarce energy & water, often for foreign-owned operators' profit. Should public resources subsidize offshore gains? ACM says approvals need proof of local benefit.

100

ACM Policy Committees @acmpolicy.bsky.social · 28/07/2026

1/ Africa needs ~700 more data centers. South Africa already hosts the continent's most developed market. ACM just told the South African Human Rights Commission: this is a human rights question, not only an infrastructure one. Thread 🧵

100

ACM Policy Committees @acmpolicy.bsky.social · 17/07/2026

4/ For CS/AI researchers specifically: vague provisions could create legal risk around work on algorithmic fairness and bias mitigation — a core, active research area.

100

ACM Policy Committees @acmpolicy.bsky.social · 17/07/2026

3/ It also treats indirect cost rates as a competitive penalty, not the research infrastructure they actually fund. And it'd force researchers to lock in conference/publication plans before results exist.

100

ACM Policy Committees @acmpolicy.bsky.social · 17/07/2026

2/ The proposed rule (OMB-2026-0034) would let a political appointee approve or block discretionary grants — demoting peer review to "advisory" status.

100

ACM Policy Committees @acmpolicy.bsky.social · 17/07/2026

1/ Seven computing & data science orgs just told OMB the same thing: withdraw this rule. Here's why they're worried. 🧵

100

ACM Policy Committees @acmpolicy.bsky.social · 11/07/2026

In computer science, conferences aren't a nice-to-have; they are the primary venue for peer-reviewed publication. OMB's proposal to require pre-approval for conference attendance at grant-submission time is impractical: researchers don't know which conferences they'll submit to a priori. #TechPolicy

021

ACM Policy Committees @acmpolicy.bsky.social · 10/07/2026

Peer review works. Over 50 years, 30–50% of US economic growth has come from computer science — largely driven by government-funded academic research reviewed by qualified scientists. Adding political review to grant decisions won't advance US interests; it will introduce uncertainty. #TechPolicy

062

ACM Policy Committees @acmpolicy.bsky.social · 09/07/2026

USTPC urges that these proposed changes be discarded. Public comment closes July 13, 2026. #TechPolicy #SciencePolicy #ResearchFunding #PeerReview

100

ACM Policy Committees @acmpolicy.bsky.social · 09/07/2026

§ 200.461 hits ACM & peer societies directly. As nonprofits sustained by member dues & conference registration fees, we anchor the review, publication & community infrastructure of computing research. Weaken that, and you weaken the ecosystem it supports.

100

ACM Policy Committees @acmpolicy.bsky.social · 09/07/2026

§§ 200.432 & 200.454 would require pre-approval for conference attendance at grant-submission time & bar federal funds from professional-society membership. In CS, conferences ARE peer review. Researchers can't pre-approve conferences that haven't been announced yet.

100

ACM Policy Committees @acmpolicy.bsky.social · 09/07/2026

Why it matters: Over 50 years, 30–50% of US economic growth has come from advances in computer science — largely driven by government-funded academic research. The internet, Google, Akamai: none exist without peer-reviewed federal research. Peer review works.

100

ACM Policy Committees @acmpolicy.bsky.social · 09/07/2026

§ 200.205 would add political review to grant decisions. USTPC: This won't advance US interests — it will stymie innovation, introduce unreasonable uncertainty into the scientific endeavor, and add bureaucratic bloat. Directly contrary to OMB's claim of streamlining.

100

ACM Policy Committees @acmpolicy.bsky.social · 09/07/2026

USTPC joins science societies opposing the proposal. Its response focuses on two concerns: the politicization of the scientific enterprise and the impact on the scientific societies that anchor it.

100

ACM Policy Committees @acmpolicy.bsky.social · 09/07/2026

🧵 ACM's US Technology Policy Committee has filed its response to OMB's proposed overhaul of the rules governing federal grants. The verdict: the changes would harm research and innovation.

111