New Article Published in Big Data & Society

Christoph Lutz, together with co-authors Heike Felzmann (NUI Galway), Eduard Fosch-Villaronga (University of Leiden) and Aurelia Tamo-Larrieux (University of Zurich), recently published the article "Transparency You Can Trust: Transparency Requirements for Artificial Intelligence between Legal Norms and Contextual Concerns" in the emerging open access journal Big Data & Society. In this conceptual paper, the authors approach the issue of artificial intelligence (AI) and transparency from a multi-disciplinary perspective. The fact that modern AI technology often lacks transparency, yet increasingly affects individuals across life domains is the starting point of the article. The authors then proceed in three steps. First, they discuss ethical and legal literature about transparency and AI, especially as it pertains to the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR). Second, they problematize a simplistic information- and explanation-based understanding of transparency by referring to critical literature in the social sciences and empirical work in human-computer interaction. Finally, they synthesize the information-based approach with the critical approach, focusing on trustworthiness as a key element when it comes to transparency and AI. The article is freely available here. Since its publication, it has been widely downloaded and shared on social media.