Policy lab explores how government administers by algorithm

Federal administrative agencies across the United States employ machine learning and artificial intelligence to make decisions. But what happens when agencies can't explain how those algorithms work? Students in a policy lab at Stanford, Administering by Algorithm: Artificial Intelligence in the Regulatory State, are exploring this question and what it means for the future when law and computers intersect. Stanford co-instructors David Engstrom, Daniel Ho and California Supreme Court Justice Mariano-Florentino Cuéllar – along with Professor Catherine Sharkey of New York University School of Law – have brought together 25 burgeoning lawyers, computer scientists and engineers to probe the technologies government agencies develop and deploy. The lab culminates in a report that will be submitted to the Administrative Conference of the United States (ACUS), which puts forward guidelines outlining how such government agencies should operate.