Abstract
A number of governmental and non-governmental organisations have made significant efforts to encourage the development of artificial intelligence in line with a series of aspirational concepts such as transparency, interpretability, explainability and accountability. The difficulty at present, however, is that these concepts exist at a fairly abstract level, whereas in order for them to have the tangible effects desired they need to become more concrete and specific. This paper undertakes precisely this process of concretisation, mapping how the different concepts interrelate and what in particular they each require in order to move from being high-level aspirations to detailed and enforceable requirements. We argue that the key concept in this process is accountability, since unless an entity can be held accountable for compliance with the other concepts, and indeed more generally, those concepts cannot do the work required of them. There is a variety of taxonomies of accountability in the literature. However, at the core of each account appears to be a sense of ‘answerability’; a need to explain or to give an account. It is this ability to
call an entity to account which provides the impetus for each of the other concepts and helps us to understand what they must each require.
call an entity to account which provides the impetus for each of the other concepts and helps us to understand what they must each require.
Original language | English |
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Article number | e7 |
Number of pages | 23 |
Journal | Data & Policy |
Volume | 4 |
Early online date | 18 Feb 2022 |
DOIs | |
Publication status | Published - 18 Feb 2022 |
Bibliographical note
Funding StatementThis work was supported by the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC) under research grant EP/R033846/1. The funder had no role in study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish or preparation of the manuscript.
Data Availability Statement
This study does not contain empirical data. The other resources on which the article draws are listed in the references section.Keywords
- algorithmic systems
- autonomous systems
- artificial intelligence
- machine learning
- transparency
- accountability
- explainability
- responsibility
- auditability