Chapter 3 of 10All chapters
Chapter 3 of 10
Transparency and explanation
Justifying a decision.
Why it matters
People affected by an automated decision have an interest, and often a legal right, in knowing the reasons. Complex models make this genuinely hard.
- Explanation methods give approximations, not the actual computation.
- Simpler models are sometimes worth a small accuracy cost for this reason.
Documentation
Recording what data trained a system, how it was evaluated, and where it should not be used has become standard practice, and it is what makes later review possible.