Frank Pasquale

In her Combatting the Code: Regulating Automated Government Decision-Making in Comparative Context, Yee-Fui Ng examines many instances of predictive AI use that raise serious concerns about potential inaccuracy, discrimination, or alienation. Her penultimate chapter, ‘Towards a Framework for Technological Governance’, provides important methods for addressing these problems. The book also articulates normative foundations for a positive ideal of legal decision-making that is enhanced—not replaced by—AI.

This post, an appreciative response to the book, will focus on the reasons given for decisions, particularly given the rise of chatbots that can simulate reasoning processes. My main contention is that the principles animating Combatting the Code should not only lead us to demand reasons for automated decision-making, but in many cases should also require human reasoners to articulate such rationales in response to arguments posed by applicants and litigants.

Anna Huggins

Associate Professor Yee-Fui Ng’s new book, Combatting the Code, makes an important and timely contribution to debates about regulating automated government decision-making. Her in-depth comparative analysis of grounds of legal challenge for automated government decision-making across four dimensions (judicial review for rationality, anti-discrimination, public sector privacy and data protection, and freedom of information) in the United States (US), United Kingdom (UK), and Australia is an impressive feat. She also proposes a new framework for technological governance that moves beyond a focus on external legal and political accountability measures by foregrounding the importance of internal managerial controls for automated systems within government agencies.