Steven M. Bellovin, James X. Dempsey, Ece Kamar, and Susan Landau
On January 24-25, 2024, with support from the National Science Foundation and the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation, we convened a diverse group of government officials, representatives of leading technology companies, technology and policy experts from academia and the non-profit sector, advocates, and stakeholders for a workshop on advanced automated decision making, contestability, and the law.
Contestability is often discussed in terms of transparency, interpretability or explainability of the automated decision system, and contestability does require that meaningful explanations be provided to the user and the subject. However, contestability is more than just transparency, interpretability, or explanation. In the workshop, we explored different meaning of contestability and what is needed to achieve it in government systems. The following publications describe this work:
- Recommendations for Government Development and Use of Advanced Automated Systems to Make Decisions about Individuals by Susan Landau, James X. Dempsey, Ece Kamar, and Steven M. Bellovin, Arkiv, March 4, 2024.
- Challenging the Machine: Contestability in Government AI Systems by Jim Dempsey and Susan Landau, Lawfare, March 11, 2024.
- The Lawfare Podcast: Contestability in Government AI Systems with Eugenia Lostri, Jim Dempsey, Ece Kamar, and Jen Patja, April 3, 2024
- Further material to be added shortly.
In addition, Steven M. Bellovin and Susan Landau ran a student workshop on Advanced Automated Systems, Contestability, and the Law on March 29, 2024.