Content area
Abstract
In May 2018, Europe’s new General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) will apply across all European Union Member States.1 The GDPR is an ambitious, complicated, contested law aimed at making Europe ‘fit for the digital age’.2 Among the law’s many provisions are several related to automated decision-making, notably, Article 22 and certain provisions of Articles 13–15. These provisions, which restrict automated decisions and require associated safeguards, are causing consternation among researchers, lawyers, and others concerned with decisions made by machine learning (ML) or artificial intelligence (AI). ML or AI systems are, among possible modes of decision-making, uniquely in danger of defying any human understanding.3 Automated decisions without any human intervention or understanding would seem to flout European ideas of autonomy and personhood.4 Therefore, these provisions exist to provide some meaningful information to data subjects about how their data is used. There is a fierce disagreement over whether these provisions create a data subject’s ‘right to explanation’. This article seeks to reorient that debate by showing that the plain text of the GDPR supports such a right.