The importance of human oversight in AI systems
AI should be designed and used in a way that ensures that humans remain in control and that AI does not undermine human autonomy or decision-making. This is particularly in areas where their use could have significant impacts on human rights, in order to prevent negative consequences. It is also very important that humans understand how AI and its algorithms work and that they are able to explain their decisions.
Unsurprisingly, human autonomy has been acknowledged as critical for human-centered design and the deployment of AI – a core value in its own right, making it important to safeguard humans against the detrimental impacts of technology. Autonomy is important in diverse ways, not least due to the fact that it is intertwined with various values, including human dignity, transparency, and privacy.
Description of how lack of human oversight can affect transparency
AI systems should be designed to be transparent, explainable, and auditable to make it easier for humans to understand and manage their behavior. Besides being designed for particular tasks, for them to be considered ethically acceptable, they should not impede human autonomy. Transparent AI makes the underlying values explicit, encouraging companies to take responsibility for AI-based decisions.
One of the main reasons people might be afraid of AI is that it can be difficult to understand how it works. While some AI technologies, such as planning algorithms and semantic reasoning, are quite easy to explain, it is difficult to explain the relationship between input and output for other AI technologies, especially data-driven technologies such as machine learning. However, AI should not be as opaque as it might seem. It is possible to open the proverbial “black box.”
The point of transparent AI is that an AI model’s outcome should be appropriately communicated and explained. In addition, stakeholders should be able to account for how an AI model made a decision. Transparent AI also enables people to understand what is taking place in AI models. Therefore, the more effects an advanced or AI-powered algorithm has, the more crucial it is that it is explainable and that all ethical considerations have been taken into account. Effective human oversight is critical to ensure that AI is being used in ways that align with ethical principles and regulatory requirements.
Recommendations for ensuring human oversight in AI systems
Assistive AI: Rather than overly rely on autonomous solutions, it is important to embed assistive solutions into AI to help with various processes. These processes include making explainable and justifiable recommendations to users and measuring impacts and outcomes to learn and improve. Assistive AI helps people make faster and better decisions by utilizing human inputs and existing data to provide the answers. Ultimately, subject-matter experts should make the final decisions to ensure human autonomy is integrated into these systems.
Encouraging respect for people’s autonomous standing: This requires acknowledging that people are able to author their lives. It means that users should not be treated as not being able to judge sociotechnical practices.
Enhance Informational Self-governance: Informational self-governance can be perceived as a way of exercising an individual’s autonomous agency by governing their digital representation. AI-infused platforms and practices can offer affordances for people’s self-governance of digital representations as well as for their digital identity’s performance.