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Algorithms and AI tools are becoming increasingly influential artefacts in commercial and governance contexts. Algorithms and AI tools are not value neutral; to some extent they must be rendered knowable and known as objects, and in their implementation and deployment, to see clearly and understand their implications for moral values, and what actions can be undertaken to optimise them in their design and use towards ethical goals, or whether they are even suitable for particular goals. Transparency is a term with variable uses and interpretations, a problem which can challenge its use in design and policy. Here, we attempt to further clarify transparency. We argue that transparency is the state of affairs that obtains when relevant and understandable information about some X is available and accessible to some target audience (A), so that this information is sufficient for A for the purpose (P). Moreover, we connect this conceptualisation with transparency’s moral value, where P is to provide an account about X’s supportive or conflicting relationship with relevant values and goals. Such teleological ends in our context here can be the ability to account for the degree to which an algorithm, process or organisation respects certain values and is conducive to (social) goals., Ethics & Philosophy of Technology

To make evaluations about the morally relevant impacts of algorithms, transparency is needed. This paper lays out discussion of algorithms and transparency in an explicitly moral analysis with a special focus on the domain of justice and security. The paper provides an account of the moral import of transparency, defined itself as an instrumental value denoting a state of affairs conducive to acquisition of knowledge about some X. A normative account of transparency is outlined relying on an intuitionist framework rooted in the works of Ross and Robert Audi. It will be argued that transparency can be derived as a subsidiary (prima facie) principle from other duties including beneficence and justice and that it is groundable in the value of knowledge. Building on this foundation, the paper examines transparency and duty conflict with a special focus on algorithms in justice and security, recognising that complete transparency can be impossible where duties conflict. It is argued that as a subsidiary (prima facie) principle, transparency is overridable but ineradicable, which is to say that sufficiently justifiable reasons for secrecy or opacity can licence limiting transparency, that is, there may be occasion where full transparency is not our final duty., Ethics & Philosophy of Technology

This article presents a conceptual investigation into the value impacts and relations of algorithms in the domain of justice and security. As a conceptual investigation, it represents one step in a value sensitive design based methodology (not incorporated here are empirical and technical investigations). Here, we explicate and analyse the expression of values of accuracy, privacy, fairness and equality, property and ownership, and accountability and transparency in this context. We find that values are sensitive to disvalue if algorithms are designed, implemented or deployed inappropriately or without sufficient consideration for their value impacts, potentially resulting in problems including discrimination and constrained autonomy. Furthermore, we outline a framework of conceptual relations of values indicated by our analysis, and potential value tensions in their implementation and deployment with a view towards supporting future research, and supporting the value sensitive design of algorithms in justice and security., Ethics & Philosophy of Technology, Values Technology and Innovation