Abstract

In the White Paper on Artificial Intelligence (AI), the European Commission (EC) highlighted the importance of the seven requirements for autonomous systems, identified and described by the High Level Expert Group (HLEG) in the Trustworthy AI Guidelines published in April 2019. One of the key conditions for finding AI trustworthy is its transparency. Consequently, the requirement of transparency is indicated by HLEG in the Assessment List for Trustworthy Artificial Intelligence (ALTAI).The article highlights two key aspects of transparency:1) access to reliable information about the operation of the AI model, including information about the training procedure, training data, machine learning algorithms, methods of testing and validating the AI system;2) access to a reliable explanation calibrated for different audiences (from ordinary citizen to expert), covering both the technical processes of the AI system and the rationale for decisions or predictions made by the AI system (as a basis for the right to contest an automatically made decision).The author points out that transparency of the AI operation and explanation of its decisions should refer – to a varying degree – not only to decisions based solely on automated processing of personal data, but to all AI activities and applications. This would undoubtedly contribute to greater public confidence in AI, but also to proper assignment of responsibility for the operation of autonomous systems.