Rahwan, I. (2018). Society-in-the-loop: programming the algorithmic social contract. Ethics and Information Technology, 20(1), 5-14.
Rahwan, I. (2018). Society-in-the-loop: programming the algorithmic social contract. Ethics and Information Technology, 20(1), 5-14.
Recent rapid advances in Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Machine Learning have raised many questions about the regulatory and governance mechanisms for autonomous machines. Many commentators, scholars, and policy-makers now call for ensuring that algorithms governing our lives are transparent, fair, and accountable. Here, I propose a conceptual framework the regulation of AI and algorithmic systems. I argue that we need tools to program, debug and maintain an algorithmic social contract, a pact between various human stakeholders, mediated by machines. To achieve this, we can adapt the concept of human-in-the-loop (HITL) from the fields of modeling and simulation, and interactive machine learning. In particular, I propose a society-in-the-loop (SITL) framework which combines the HITL control paradigm with mechanisms for negotiating the values of various stakeholders affected by AI systems. In short, `SITL = HITL + Social Contract.'