# Closing the AI Accountability Gap: Defining an End-to-End Framework for Internal Algorithmic Auditing

arXiv: https://arxiv.org/abs/2001.00973 · HTML: https://mlsanity.com/paper/2001.00973/

## Key facts

- Cited by 384 papers in the map (data through 14 Oct 2026).
- First posted on arXiv 3 Jan 2020.

## Built on by (most cited first, 30 of 384)

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- [Auditing large language models: a three-layered approach](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2302.08500/) (2023)
- [Black-Box Access is Insufficient for Rigorous AI Audits](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2401.14446/) (2024)
- [What Do We Want From Explainable Artificial Intelligence (XAI)? -- A Stakeholder Perspective on XAI and a Conceptual Model Guiding Interdisciplinary XAI Research](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2102.07817/) (2021)
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- [Frontier AI Regulation: Managing Emerging Risks to Public Safety](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2307.03718/) (2023)
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- [Evaluating the Social Impact of Generative AI Systems in Systems and Society](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2306.05949/) (2023)
- [The Fallacy of AI Functionality](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2206.09511/) (2022)
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- [Language Generation Models Can Cause Harm: So What Can We Do About It? An Actionable Survey](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2210.07700/) (2022)
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- [Diagnosing and Rectifying Vision Models using Language](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2302.04269/) (2023)
- [Do People Engage Cognitively with AI? Impact of AI Assistance on Incidental Learning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2202.05402/) (2022)
- [Evaluation Gaps in Machine Learning Practice](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2205.05256/) (2022)
- [How Different Groups Prioritize Ethical Values for Responsible AI](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2205.07722/) (2022)
- [Designing Disaggregated Evaluations of AI Systems: Choices, Considerations, and Tradeoffs](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2103.06076/) (2021)
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- [Designing for Responsible Trust in AI Systems: A Communication Perspective](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2204.13828/) (2022)

## Abstract (arXiv)

Rising concern for the societal implications of artificial intelligence systems has inspired a wave of academic and journalistic literature in which deployed systems are audited for harm by investigators from outside the organizations deploying the algorithms. However, it remains challenging for practitioners to identify the harmful repercussions of their own systems prior to deployment, and, once deployed, emergent issues can become difficult or impossible to trace back to their source. In this paper, we introduce a framework for algorithmic auditing that supports artificial intelligence system development end-to-end, to be applied throughout the internal organization development lifecycle. Each stage of the audit yields a set of documents that together form an overall audit report, drawing on an organization's values or principles to assess the fit of decisions made throughout the process. The proposed auditing framework is intended to contribute to closing the accountability gap in the development and deployment of large-scale artificial intelligence systems by embedding a robust process to ensure audit integrity.
