Statutory Professions in AI governance and their consequences for explainable AI

Abstract: Intentional and accidental harms arising from the use of AI have impacted the health, safety and rights of individuals. While regulatory frameworks are being developed, there remains a lack of consensus on methods necessary to deliver safe AI. The potential for explainable AI (XAI) to contribute to the effectiveness of the regulation of AI is being increasingly examined. Regulation must include methods to ensure compliance on an ongoing basis, though there is an absence of practical proposals on how to achieve this. For XAI to be successfully incorporated into a regulatory system, the individuals who are engaged in interpreting/explaining the model to stakeholders should be sufficiently qualified for the role. Statutory professionals are prevalent in domains in which harm can be done to the health, safety and rights of individuals. The most obvious examples are doctors, engineers and lawyers. Those professionals are required to exercise skill and judgement and to defend their decision making process in the event of harm occurring. We propose that a statutory profession framework be introduced as a necessary part of the AI regulatory framework for compliance and monitoring purposes. We will refer to this new statutory professional as an AI Architect (AIA). This AIA would be responsible to ensure the risk of harm is minimised and accountable in the event that harms occur. The AIA would also be relied on to provide appropriate interpretations/explanations of XAI models to stakeholders. Further, in order to satisfy themselves that the models have been developed in a satisfactory manner, the AIA would require models to have appropriate transparency. Therefore it is likely that the introduction of an AIA system would lead to an increase in the use of XAI to enable AIA to discharge their professional obligations.