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All Ethical Issues

Accountability

Category: Social and Cultural Issues

Numerous agencies have announced efforts to ensure that automated decisions are 'accountable.' As Rieke, Bogen & Robinson (2018) write, "Advocates, policymakers, and technologists have begun demanding that these automated decisions be explained, justified, and audited. There is a growing desire to "open the black box" of complex algorithms and hold the institutions using them accountable."

The need for accountability comes in contrast to the idea that analytics and artificial intelligence systems may be autonomous. We trust autonomous systems, and may do so reasonably, even if they sometimes fail. The question of accountability thus becomes one of whether we over-trust or under-trust such systems;  "The unfortunate accidents caused by autonomous vehicles can be seen as cases of over-trust: in each case the human driver falsely believed that the automated system in control of the driving was capable of performing at a level at which it was not capable of. Thus, our aim could be to encourage appropriate levels of trust in AI, with accountability regimes taking the nuances of over and under trust into account." (Millar, et.al., 2018; see also IEEE 2016)

But the nature of AI might make accountability impossible. "Suppose every single mortgage applicant of a given race is denied their loan, but the Machine Learning engine driving that decision is structured in such a way that the relevant engineers know exactly which features are driving such classifications. Further suppose that none of these are race-related. What is the company to do at this point?" (Danzig, 2020).

Examples and Articles

New human-machine relationships
A short review of "Futureproof: 9 Rules for Humans in the Age of Automation" by Kevin Roose "AI is everywhere. Jobs are being automated. Algorithms run our life. What are you doing about it?" and "We need to be realistic about what AI can and can't do, and be really careful before we start turning important tasks over to machines that might not be ready to handle them." Direct Link

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Sure, A.I. Is Powerful—But Can We Make It Accountable?
Clive Thompson, Wired, 10.27.2016. "After crunching your info—age, job, house location and value—the machine decides, nope, no policy for you. You ask the same question: “Why?”" Direct Link

Do you have another example of Accountability? Suggest it here

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