A lack of transparency regarding the use of artificial intelligence in decision-making by public bodies makes it harder for people to challenge decisions, research by legal activist group the Public Law Project (PLP) has revealed.
The legal and regulatory framework for an increasingly automated state cannot be left to evolve through the courts alone according to the PLP, which recommends making it a legal requirement to notify individuals where AI or automation has been used.
Currently, public bodies across the UK are increasingly using automated tools, including AI, to make or support decisions about people’s lives, such as social security, tax or adult social care services, the group said. People are rarely told whether a tool has been used to make a decision, however, according to the report, Missing Pieces: Transparency and Accountability in Public Body Automated (and Automated Assisted) Decision-making, funded by the Nuffield Foundation. Its findings suggests people are unable to effectively contest the use of tools, don’t understand how automation works, and are not in a position to challenge whether it treated them fairly.
The report reveals that of the 15 automated systems believed to be in use, only four appear on the government’s public register of algorithmic tools, the Algorithmic Transparency Recording Standard (ATRS), even though several others fall within its mandatory scope.
What it classifies as 'high-risk systems' are also missing from the government’s own register. Of the 125 ATRS entries reviewed, researchers found only one linked to an equality impact assessment. It also found that public bodies often withhold information under freedom of information exemptions, most commonly on law enforcement grounds.
Current data protection laws distinguish between decisions which are 'solely' automated and those where there is a 'human-in-the-loop'. Rights to be notified and informed do not apply where AI or automation is used.
Public Law Project has called for governance, engagement and design processes to be informed by public law considerations from the outset. It wants ATRS to be placed on a statutory footing, and for there to be a legal requirement for people to be notified when and how automated systems have been used to support individual decisions about them, with enforceable individual rights to information about those systems.
The report concludes, that, while the government has been clear about the importance of transparency in automated decision-making, the research has found the 'patchwork of existing transparency rights and requirements' fails to provide sufficient information to challenge automated systems - and the decisions they make - by way of judicial review.
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