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Five Reasons WhyAlgorithmic Accountability
Is Hard
Nicholas DiakopoulosNorthwestern University, School of Communication
www.nickdiakopoulos.com | @ndiakopoulos | [email protected]
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Five Reasons
1. Information Deficits
2. Sociotechnical Assemblages
3. Temporal Instability
4. Expectation Setting
5. Legal Barriers
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External auditing may suffer from knowledge gaps
Omitted variable bias
Mechanism identification difficult from observational studies
Cooperating target still controls access
INFORMATION DEFICITS
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Intertwined assemblages of algorithms and people
Feedback loops reflect / amplify human behavior
Notion of responsibilitydiffused through complexity
SOCIOTECHNICAL
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Dynamic systems that can change at almost any time (or not)
Randomness and probabilistic behavior
Tradeoffs between sampling rates and resources for auditing
Conveying results dynamically, beyond monitoring dashboards
INSTABILITY
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What should be the behavior of an algorithm?
Where does that expectation come from?
How do we define that and measure it quantitatively?
EXPECTATIONS
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Public records laws (e.g. FOIA) and accessibility of government
algorithms
Computer Fraud and Abuse Act (CFAA) and chilling effects on
audits
LEGAL FRICTION
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Thanks! Questions? ContactNick DiakopoulosTwitter: @ndiakopoulosEmail: [email protected]: http://www.nickdiakopoulos.comWeb: http://www.algorithmtips.org