Transparency, when used as an important principle in
constitutional law, is used as a tool to support accountability and
good governance. Citizens want to see and understand the decisions
of public officials, so that they can hold the officials and
government accountable. Transparency is also a key principle found
in most policy documents on ethical and responsible AI. While the
notion of 'making visible and understandable' seems
similar, transparency is a much more complex matter when dealing
with AI.
The nature of AI, in particular machine-learning that adapt and
change over time, is opaque and complex. This means that making
some part of the algorithm visible to give effect to transparency
is not helpful. Transparency in this context had to be redefined to
include 'explainability', that is the ability to explain
how the algorithmic decisions are made, and 'traceability',
which provides information about the data sources and how they are
managed.
