What to do about biased AI? Going beyond transparency of automated systems

Automated decision making and the difficulty of ensuring accountability for algorithmic decisions have been in the news. This is a big deal if we are to start addressing some of the serious ethical issues in developing Artificial Intelligence systems that can't easily be made transparent. I'm breaking out of a concentrated book-writing space to offer my voice – and to outline some of the directions I think we should be taking to address the wicked problems of ethics, algorithms and accountability – and hoping also to be standing up to be counted as one of the people opening out discussions in this space, so that it can be more diverse. A few months ago I submitted a response to the UK's Science and Technology Committee consultation on automated decision making. This consultation asked specifically how transparency could be empoyed to allow more scrutiny of algorithmic systems.