Artificial intelligence is more powerful than ever. How do we hold it accountable?

Entrusting important decisions to a system that can't explain itself presents obvious dangers. Take the case of Eric Loomis, a Wisconsin man sentenced to six years in prison for eluding police while driving a car that had been used in a drive-by shooting. The judge's sentence was based in part on a risk score for Loomis generated by COMPAS, a commercial risk-assessment tool used, according to one study, "to assess more than 1 million offenders" in the last two decades. Loomis appealed his sentence, based on the court's use of the AI-generated risk score, because it relied on a proprietary algorithm whose exact methodology is unknown. COMPAS is designed to estimate an individual's likelihood of committing another crime in the future, but evidence suggests that it may be no better at predicting risk than untrained observers.