Homework: Reflect on Readings

Background

You are assigned readings throughout this course. The readings cover subjects including design, AI and ethics. Each week, you are asked to reflect on your readings, to help you get the most out of the material, and be properly prepared for next week’s course. 

Learning Objectives

After completing this activity you will have gained a deeper understanding of this week’s readings, and will have summarized the core ideas in the papers in your own words, so that you can work with them in the course going forward.

Instructions

• In your personal notebook, create an entry for each of the questions below, with an answer to the question in your own words.
• Questions for Almada (2019)
  1. It is often claimed that a decision is only automated when no human is involved at all. The author makes a different assessment, and considers some decision that a human ultimately makes as still being automated. When is this the case, according to the author?
  2. The author talks about human dignity and protecting the “incomputable self”. In your own words, how would you describe what respecting the right to human dignity and protecting the incomputable self mean?
  3. To be able to exercise the right to human intervention in response to an automated decision, a user needs at least two things from the system that makes the decision. Describe what these two things are according to the author.
  4. Often, when people talk about contesting a decision, they think about an individual responding to a decision after it has been made. The author also suggests another way of enabling contestability, that does not happen on the individual level after a decision has been made. When and by whom and about what is this contestation performed?
• Questions for Alfrink et al. (2021)
  1. Describe at least three properties an AI system must have for it to qualify as contestable.
  2. Contestability is a way to safeguard certain specific fundamental human rights. What are those rights, and how would you describe them?
  3. The design framework organizes possible interventions into two categories, what are those categories? Why do the authors use this organization?

Product

The result of this activity is a collection of notes, each with a summary of one idea in the assigned readings, described in your own words, captured in your personal notebook.

Follow-up

You will use the ideas generated in this way in next week’s session’s activities.