Safe and Ethical AI (SEA) Platform Network · Linking Artificial Intelligence Principles (LAIP)

3. Accountability

Institutions should be held responsible for decisions made by the algorithms that they use, even if it is not feasible to explain in detail how the algorithms produce their results.

Principle: Principles for Algorithmic Transparency and Accountability, Jan 12, 2017

Published by ACM US Public Policy Council (USACM)

Related Principles

· Transparency

As AI increasingly changes the nature of work, workers, customers and vendors need to have information about how AI systems operate so that they can understand how decisions are made. Their involvement will help to identify potential bias, errors and unintended outcomes. Transparency is not necessarily nor only a question of open source code. While in some circumstances open source code will be helpful, what is more important are clear, complete and testable explanations of what the system is doing and why. Intellectual property, and sometimes even cyber security, is rewarded by a lack of transparency. Innovation generally, including in algorithms, is a value that should be encouraged. How, then, are these competing values to be balanced? One possibility is to require algorithmic verifiability rather than full algorithmic disclosure. Algorithmic verifiability would require companies to disclose not the actual code driving the algorithm but information allowing the effect of their algorithms to be independently assessed. In the absence of transparency regarding their algorithms’ purpose and actual effect, it is impossible to ensure that competition, labour, workplace safety, privacy and liability laws are being upheld. When accidents occur, the AI and related data will need to be transparent and accountable to an accident investigator, so that the process that led to the accident can be understood.

Published by Centre for International Governance Innovation (CIGI), Canada in Toward a G20 Framework for Artificial Intelligence in the Workplace, Jul 19, 2018

4. Principle 4 — Transparency

Issue: How can we ensure that A IS are transparent? [Candidate Recommendation] Develop new standards* that describe measurable, testable levels of transparency, so that systems can be objectively assessed and levels of compliance determined. For designers, such standards will provide a guide for self assessing transparency during development and suggest mechanisms for improving transparency. (The mechanisms by which transparency is provided will vary significantly, for instance 1) for users of care or domestic robots, a why did you do that button which, when pressed, causes the robot to explain the action it just took, 2) for validation or certification agencies, the algorithms underlying the A IS and how they have been verified, and 3) for accident investigators, secure storage of sensor and internal state data, comparable to a flight data recorder or black box.) *Note that IEEE Standards Working Group P7001™ has been set up in response to this recommendation.

Published by The IEEE Global Initiative on Ethics of Autonomous and Intelligent Systems in Ethically Aligned Design (v2): General Principles, (v1) Dec 13, 2016. (v2) Dec 12, 2017

5 DEMOCRATIC PARTICIPATION PRINCIPLE

AIS must meet intelligibility, justiﬁability, and accessibility criteria, and must be subjected to democratic scrutiny, debate, and control. 1) AIS processes that make decisions affecting a person’s life, quality of life, or reputation must be intelligible to their creators. 2) The decisions made by AIS affecting a person’s life, quality of life, or reputation should always be justiﬁable in a language that is understood by the people who use them or who are subjected to the consequences of their use. Justiﬁcation consists in making transparent the most important factors and parameters shaping the decision, and should take the same form as the justiﬁcation we would demand of a human making the same kind of decision. 3) The code for algorithms, whether public or private, must always be accessible to the relevant public authorities and stakeholders for veriﬁcation and control purposes. 4) The discovery of AIS operating errors, unexpected or undesirable effects, security breaches, and data leaks must imperatively be reported to the relevant public authorities, stakeholders, and those affected by the situation. 5) In accordance with the transparency requirement for public decisions, the code for decision making algorithms used by public authorities must be accessible to all, with the exception of algorithms that present a high risk of serious danger if misused. 6) For public AIS that have a signiﬁcant impact on the life of citizens, citizens should have the opportunity and skills to deliberate on the social parameters of these AIS, their objectives, and the limits of their use. 7) We must at all times be able to verify that AIS are doing what they were programmed for and what they are used for. 8) Any person using a service should know if a decision concerning them or affecting them was made by an AIS. 9) Any user of a service employing chatbots should be able to easily identify whether they are interacting with an AIS or a real person. 10) Artiﬁcial intelligence research should remain open and accessible to all.

Published by University of Montreal in The Montreal Declaration for a Responsible Development of Artificial Intelligence, Dec 4, 2018

1. Demand That AI Systems Are Transparent

A transparent artificial intelligence system is one in which it is possible to discover how, and why, the system made a decision, or in the case of a robot, acted the way it did. In particular: A. We stress that open source code is neither necessary nor sufficient for transparency – clarity cannot be obfuscated by complexity. B. For users, transparency is important because it builds trust in, and understanding of, the system, by providing a simple way for the user to understand what the system is doing and why. C. For validation and certification of an AI system, transparency is important because it exposes the system’s processes for scrutiny. D. If accidents occur, the AI will need to be transparent and accountable to an accident investigator, so the internal process that led to the accident can be understood. E. Workers must have the right to demand transparency in the decisions and outcomes of AI systems as well as the underlying algorithms (see principle 4 below). This includes the right to appeal decisions made by AI algorithms, and having it reviewed by a human being. F. Workers must be consulted on AI systems’ implementation, development and deployment. G. Following an accident, judges, juries, lawyers, and expert witnesses involved in the trial process require transparency and accountability to inform evidence and decision making. The principle of transparency is a prerequisite for ascertaining that the remaining principles are observed. See Principle 2 below for operational solution.

Published by UNI Global Union in Top 10 Principles For Ethical Artificial Intelligence, Dec 11, 2017

4 Foster responsibility and accountability

Humans require clear, transparent specification of the tasks that systems can perform and the conditions under which they can achieve the desired level of performance; this helps to ensure that health care providers can use an AI technology responsibly. Although AI technologies perform specific tasks, it is the responsibility of human stakeholders to ensure that they can perform those tasks and that they are used under appropriate conditions. Responsibility can be assured by application of “human warranty”, which implies evaluation by patients and clinicians in the development and deployment of AI technologies. In human warranty, regulatory principles are applied upstream and downstream of the algorithm by establishing points of human supervision. The critical points of supervision are identified by discussions among professionals, patients and designers. The goal is to ensure that the algorithm remains on a machine learning development path that is medically effective, can be interrogated and is ethically responsible; it involves active partnership with patients and the public, such as meaningful public consultation and debate (101). Ultimately, such work should be validated by regulatory agencies or other supervisory authorities. When something does go wrong in application of an AI technology, there should be accountability. Appropriate mechanisms should be adopted to ensure questioning by and redress for individuals and groups adversely affected by algorithmically informed decisions. This should include access to prompt, effective remedies and redress from governments and companies that deploy AI technologies for health care. Redress should include compensation, rehabilitation, restitution, sanctions where necessary and a guarantee of non repetition. The use of AI technologies in medicine requires attribution of responsibility within complex systems in which responsibility is distributed among numerous agents. When medical decisions by AI technologies harm individuals, responsibility and accountability processes should clearly identify the relative roles of manufacturers and clinical users in the harm. This is an evolving challenge and remains unsettled in the laws of most countries. Institutions have not only legal liability but also a duty to assume responsibility for decisions made by the algorithms they use, even if it is not feasible to explain in detail how the algorithms produce their results. To avoid diffusion of responsibility, in which “everybody’s problem becomes nobody’s responsibility”, a faultless responsibility model (“collective responsibility”), in which all the agents involved in the development and deployment of an AI technology are held responsible, can encourage all actors to act with integrity and minimize harm. In such a model, the actual intentions of each agent (or actor) or their ability to control an outcome are not considered.

Published by World Health Organization (WHO) in Key ethical principles for use of artificial intelligence for health, Jun 28, 2021