How to gain control and influence algorithms: contesting AI to find relevant reasons

Abstract

Relevancy is a prevalent term in value alignment. We either need to keep track of the relevant moral reasons, we need to embed the relevant values, or we need to learn from the relevant behaviour. What relevancy entails in particular cases, however, is often ill-defined. The reasons for this are obvious, it is hard to define relevancy in a way that is both general and concrete enough to give direction towards a specific implementation. In this paper, we describe the inherent difficulty that comes along with defining what is relevant to a particular situation. Simply due to design and the way an AI system functions, we need to state or learn particular goals and circumstances under which that goal is completed. However, because of both the changing nature of the world and the varied wielders and users of such implements, misalignment occurs, especially after a longer amount of time. We propose a way to counteract this by putting contestability front and centre throughout the lifecycle of an AI system, as it can provide insight into what is actually relevant at a particular instance. This allows designers to update the applications in such a manner that they can account for oversight during design.