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To be "accountable" means you can be called to "explain yourself". A dictionary definition is "required or expected to justify actions or decisions;". Don't c

by michael1999 2y ago

To be "accountable" means you can be called to "explain yourself". A dictionary definition is "required or expected to justify actions or decisions;". Don't confuse this with judgement, punishment, firing, etc. Those are all downstream. But step one is responding to the demand that you "make an account of the facts". That a computer or a company doesn't have a body to jail has nothing to do with fundamental accountability. The real problem is that most computer systems can not respond this demand: "explain yourself!" They can't describes the inputs to an output, the criteria and thresholds used, the history of how thresholds have changed, or the reliability of the upstream data. They just provide a result: computer says no. What's interesting is that llms are beginning to form this capacity. What damns them is not that they can't provide an accounting, but that their account is often total confabulation. Careless liars should not be placed in situations of authority; not because they can't be held accountable, but because they lie when they are.

nostrademons 2y ago
> The real problem is that most computer systems can not respond this demand: "explain yourself!" They can't describes the inputs to an output, the criteria and thresholds used, the history of how thresholds have changed, or the reliability of the upstream data. They just provide a result: computer says no. By this definition, many computer systems can. The answers are all in the logs and the source code, and the process of debugging is basically the act of holding the software accountable. It's true that the average layperson cannot do this, but there are many real-life situations where the average layperson cannot hold other people accountable. I cannot go up to the CEO of Boeing and ask why the 737-MAX I was on yesterday had a mechanical failure, nor can I go up to Elon Musk and ask why his staff are breaking into the Treasury Department computer systems. But the board of directors of Boeing or the court system, respectively, can, at least is theory.
- dullcrisp 2y ago
  I don’t know, when asked to explain my actions I don’t typically just provide an MRI scan of my brain. An explanation is something different than just the sum of the inputs that produced something.
- michael1999 2y ago
  You get it. To make the concept of accountability operational requires some standard of accounting. The historical accountability for a business agent meant to literally present oneself and provide an explanation. That where the term "accounting" comes from. But different systems have different systems of account. Firm management is accountable to the board via budgets, reports, presentations, and interviews as described in the incorporation documents. Publicly-traded firms are accountable via quarterly filings. Legal disputes require physical presence and verbal interrogation. But your example of a debugging session or logs and register traces are also an accounting! But not one admissible in traditional forums. They usually require an expert witness to provided the interpretation and voice I/O for the process. The reason you can't accost the CEO of Boeing isn't because they aren't accountable. It's because they aren't accountable to you! Accountability isn't a general property of a thing, it is a relationship between two parties. The CEO of Boeing is accountable to his board. Your contract was with Delta (or whoever) to provide transport. You have no contract with Boeing. You are 100% right that the average consumer often zero rights to accountability. Between mandatory arbitration, rights waivers, web-only interfaces, and 6-hour call-centre wait times, big companies do a pretty good job of reducing their accountability to their customers. Real accountability is expensive.
- kerblang 2y ago
  I've worked on several systems that implement an "audit log", where every single change is logged with a timestamp & user, notes are auto-generated and/or manually entered about why the change happened, users can directly review all of this, and so on - no AI involved, just software talking to a database. Highly recommended and a big step up from text logs that tend to have a lot of trash, aren't accessible to most people & get archived off to oblivionville after 2 weeks. It's especially helpful when everyone is blame-shifting and we need to know whether it was a software failure or just a user not following their own rules. It's not so much about punishment, but about developing confidence in the system design & business process that goes with it, at all organizational levels.

nostrademons 2y ago

> The real problem is that most computer systems can not respond this demand: "explain yourself!" They can't describes the inputs to an output, the criteria and thresholds used, the history of how thresholds have changed, or the reliability of the upstream data. They just provide a result: computer says no. By this definition, many computer systems can. The answers are all in the logs and the source code, and the process of debugging is basically the act of holding the software accountable. It's true that the average layperson cannot do this, but there are many real-life situations where the average layperson cannot hold other people accountable. I cannot go up to the CEO of Boeing and ask why the 737-MAX I was on yesterday had a mechanical failure, nor can I go up to Elon Musk and ask why his staff are breaking into the Treasury Department computer systems. But the board of directors of Boeing or the court system, respectively, can, at least is theory.

dullcrisp 2y ago
I don’t know, when asked to explain my actions I don’t typically just provide an MRI scan of my brain. An explanation is something different than just the sum of the inputs that produced something.
michael1999 2y ago
You get it. To make the concept of accountability operational requires some standard of accounting. The historical accountability for a business agent meant to literally present oneself and provide an explanation. That where the term "accounting" comes from. But different systems have different systems of account. Firm management is accountable to the board via budgets, reports, presentations, and interviews as described in the incorporation documents. Publicly-traded firms are accountable via quarterly filings. Legal disputes require physical presence and verbal interrogation. But your example of a debugging session or logs and register traces are also an accounting! But not one admissible in traditional forums. They usually require an expert witness to provided the interpretation and voice I/O for the process. The reason you can't accost the CEO of Boeing isn't because they aren't accountable. It's because they aren't accountable to you! Accountability isn't a general property of a thing, it is a relationship between two parties. The CEO of Boeing is accountable to his board. Your contract was with Delta (or whoever) to provide transport. You have no contract with Boeing. You are 100% right that the average consumer often zero rights to accountability. Between mandatory arbitration, rights waivers, web-only interfaces, and 6-hour call-centre wait times, big companies do a pretty good job of reducing their accountability to their customers. Real accountability is expensive.
kerblang 2y ago
I've worked on several systems that implement an "audit log", where every single change is logged with a timestamp & user, notes are auto-generated and/or manually entered about why the change happened, users can directly review all of this, and so on - no AI involved, just software talking to a database. Highly recommended and a big step up from text logs that tend to have a lot of trash, aren't accessible to most people & get archived off to oblivionville after 2 weeks. It's especially helpful when everyone is blame-shifting and we need to know whether it was a software failure or just a user not following their own rules. It's not so much about punishment, but about developing confidence in the system design & business process that goes with it, at all organizational levels.