State lawmakers crafting statutes to fight artificial intelligence-based bias in employment decisions are struggling to pry open the black box of private companies’ AI tool usage.

Colorado and Illinois, where legislators passed laws this year regulating AI use for employment decisions, and others like Texas and California that are weighing them, require varying degrees of disclosure. It appears only one US jurisdiction, New York City, has mandated employers publicly post bias audits of their AI systems, but the city’s strict definition of automated decisions allowed most employers to determine the law doesn’t apply to them.

It’s proved difficult to craft audit requirements that are effective at preventing bias. It’s also politically challenging to get policymakers to pass them as tech companies resist heavy regulation, leaving simpler transparency measures as a potentially more attainable goal.

“We’ve been pushing for audits to be a part of it. That’s the preferred approach. There doesn’t seem to be a lot of appetite for that in the states, which is unfortunate,” said Matt Scherer, senior policy counsel for workers’ rights and technology at the Center for Democracy & Technology. “The first thing that needs to happen is transparency. We need to know which companies are using which tools.”

The Colorado and Illinois laws require employers to notify job...

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