Tech “bill of rights” may be a reality soon as top science advisors to President Joe Biden are calling for it to guard against powerful new artificial intelligence technology.

According to an article by Chief science advisor to the President, Eric Lander, and the deputy director for science and society, Alondra Nelson, published in Wired magazine, there is a need to develop new safeguards against faulty and harmful uses of AI that can unfairly discriminate against people or violate their privacy.

“Enumerating the rights is just a first step. What might we do to protect them? Possibilities include the federal government refusing to buy software or technology products that fail to respect these rights, requiring federal contractors to use technologies that adhere to this ‘bill of rights,’ or adopting new laws and regulations to fill gaps,” the opinion piece said.

In one of the Biden administration’s first clearest steps toward doing something about the harmful uses of AI, the White House‘s Office of Science and Technology Policy on Friday launched a fact-finding mission to look at facial recognition and other biometric tools used to identify people or assess their emotional or mental states and character.

Also, a federal document filed on Friday seeks public comments from AI developers, experts and anyone who has been affected by biometric data collection

European regulators are ahead of the US in the matter and have already taken steps to rein in the riskiest AI applications. According to the proposed regulations outlined by European Union earlier this year, the body seeks to ban some uses of AI, such as government use of real-time scanning of facial features in public spaces. The proposals would also place a tight control over other AI applications that could threaten people’s safety or rights.

Political leaders in Western democracies have said they want to balance a desire to tap into AI’s economic and societal potential while addressing growing concerns about the reliability of tools that can track and profile individuals and make recommendations about who gets access to jobs, loans and educational opportunities.