Seeing without knowing: Limitations of the transparency ideal and its application to algorithmic accountability
By Mike Ananny, Kate Crawford. 2018
1,462 citations recorded by the source corpus.
Subfields: Computer Science Applications, Information Systems, Safety Research, AI Ethics, Fairness & Society
How researchers see this paper
The researchers whose trusted networks rank it highest, strongest advocate first. Every researcher gets a different order.
In Computer Science Applications
- Kelley Cotter
- Janghee Cho
- Ella Glikson
- Simon Schafheitle
- Andrew Quodling
- Jakko Kemper
- Amanda Askell
- Ulrich Leicht‐Deobald
In Information Systems
- Luciano Floridi
- Donghee Shin
- Aurelia Tamó-Larrieux
- Heike Felzmann
- C. Lutz
- Eduard Fosch Villaronga
- Simon Schafheitle
- Ulrich Leicht‐Deobald
In Safety Research
- Jessica Morley
- Anat Elhalal
- Libby Kinsey
- Aurelia Tamó-Larrieux
- Heike Felzmann
- C. Lutz
- Kirsten E. Martin
- Donghee Shin
In AI Ethics, Fairness & Society
- Kirsten E. Martin
- Aurelia Tamó-Larrieux
- Heike Felzmann
- C. Lutz
- Ella Glikson
- Simon Schafheitle
- Andrew Quodling
- Amanda Askell
Citations in the corpus
- Ethical principles in machine learning and artificial intelligence: cases from the field and possible ways forward (2020, background): “Ananny and Crawford (2018) comment that resorting to full algorithmic transparency may not be an adequate means to address their ethical dimensions; opening up the black-box would not suffice to disclose their modus operandi. Moreover, developers of algorithm may not be capable of explaining in plai”
- Seven HCI Grand Challenges (2019, background): “On the other hand, the ideal of complex systems ’ transparency faces technical and temporal limitations, as well as major short-comings (Ananny & Crawford, 2018).”
- Algorithms as culture: Some tactics for the ethnography of algorithmic systems (2017, background): “Transparency is not a revealing of what was always there, but a methodical reconfigur-ation of the social scene that changes it toward particular ends (see e.g. Ananny and Crawford, 2016; Strathern, 2000; Ziewitz, 2015).”
- Algorithmic content moderation: Technical and political challenges in the automation of platform governance (2020, background): “This is not to say that transparency is any sort of panacea, either in general or when it comes to algorithmic systems (Ananny and Crawford, 2018; Gorwa and Garton Ash, 2019), but minimum standards of decisional transparency are essential to allow both ordinary users and critical experts to…”
- The Role of Cooperation in Responsible AI Development (2019, background): “Full transparency is problematic as an ideal to strive for, in that it is neither necessary nor sufficient for achieving accountability in all cases (Desai and Kroll, 2017; Ananny and Crawford, 2018).”
- Truth from the machine: artificial intelligence and the materialization of identity (2021, background): “In practice, the conclusions of these systems resist human interpretation ‘ even for those with specialized training, even for computer scientists ’ (Burrell 2016; Ananny and Crawford 2018).”
- Limits and Possibilities for “Ethical AI” in Open Source: A Study of Deepfakes (2022, neutral): “affected by the limitations of transparency [11].”