Paul Welty, PhD AI, WORK, AND STAYING HUMAN

The Ethics of Black-Box Algorithms

The Ethics of Black-Box Algorithms
Explore the ethical implications of black-box algorithms and discover why decision-making matters more than the reasons behind it.

Obvious and interesting point in this debate. I still don’t know why it matters why/how a decision gets made. For me, the question is only “is this the right decision?”. Poor or good reasons, even if we can know them, don’t justify or excuse a poor decision.

Incidentally, this is no different than how we think about human beings. The reasons for a decision might be interesting or even informative, but they don’t make the decision itself good or bad.

”Take the right to explainability of how an algorithm comes to a decision. ‘That’s virtually impossible when it comes to black-box models like neural networks,” says Masood. “You cannot explain how a neural network works.’”—Is your digital transformation ethical


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