By May of next year, artificial intelligence algorithms in the EU will be legally required to provide users an explanation "every time it uses [their] personal data to choose a particular recommendation or action," writes AI lawyer John Frank Weaver :
- For example: Weaver gives us Amazon's usually reliable Alexa, which recently cued up Sir Mix a Lot, to the befuddlement of its owner.
- Why AI owes an explanation: Weaver says the U.S. should follow suit, in order to promote transparency and greater user control over the technologies that play an increasingly important role in their lives.
- Why we should tread carefully: Thomas Burri, an assistant professor of international and European law at the University of St. Gallen, told Weaver "If the first thing you need to consider when designing a new program is the explanation, does that stifle innovation and development? . . . Some decisions are hard to explain, even with full access to the algorithm...."