AI decisions: Do we deserve an explanation?

When artificial intelligence makes decisions that affect our lives, do we deserve an explanation?

For example, banks use AI to deny people credit; landlords use automated background checks to deny applicants housing; and judges turn to AI systems to help them decide who should be denied bail.

Often, these decision-makers provide little or no reason for their actions, which means that the people affected have no basis to object.

Kate Vredenburgh says individuals are, in fact, owed explanations when AI makes decisions that affect our lives. Vredenburgh, who is a 2019-2020 postdoctoral fellow at the McCoy Family Center for Ethics in Society and the Institute for Human-Centered Artificial Intelligence at Stanford University, will soon start an assistant professorship in the philosophy, logic, and scientific method department at the London School of Economics.

Here, she speaks about how she became interested in the right to an explanation and what it would mean to implement such a right:

The post AI decisions: Do we deserve an explanation? appeared first on Futurity.