Transparency Provisions Research Articles

AI-generated journalism: Do the transparency provisions in the AI Act give news readers what they hope for?

Issues linked to the increasing presence of AI-generated content in people’s lives, and the importance of being able to effectively navigate and distinguish such content, are inherently linked to transparency, a notion that our study focuses on by evaluating Art. 50 of the AI Act. This article is a call for action to take the interests of end users into account when specifying AI Act's transparency requirements. It focuses on a specific use case – media organisations producing text with the help of generative AI. We argue that in its current form, Art. 50 leaves many uncertainties and risks doing too little to protect natural persons from manipulation or to empower them to take protective actions. The article combines documental and survey data analysis (based on a sample representative of the Dutch population) to propose concrete policy and regulatory recommendations on the operationalisation of the AI Act’s transparency obligations. Its main objective is to respond to the following question: how to reconcile AI Act’s transparency provisions applicable to digital news articles generated by AI with news readers’ perceptions of manipulation and empowerment?

Calculation of the alcohol per capita consumption in Brazil: using national dataCálculo del indicador del consumo de alcohol per cápita en Brasil: uso de datos nacionales

To calculate the alcohol per capita consumption (APC) in Brazil (Brazil APC) using national data and to establish the Brazil APC as gold standard for the country, replacing the indicator previously calculated by the World Health Organization (WHO) based on international data. The Brazilian public data sources necessary for calculating the recorded APC were selected, and the alcohol concentration was defined by beverage category. For the variables of tourist APC and unrecorded APC, which are unavailable in Brazil, estimates from the United Nations (UN) and the WHO were used. The Brazil APC indicator was calculated and compared to the indicator produced by the WHO through analysis of the medians obtained for the period from 2005 to 2020. The national alcohol consumption indicator was 9.2 liters per capita in 2005, reaching 9.8 in 2020. The WHO indicator showed a consumption of 8.4 liters per capita in 2005, decreasing until 2016 and slightly increasing to 7.8 in 2020. The Brazil APC was calculated based on national sources and showed a distinct trend compared to the WHO indicator, which showed a decrease. The regular and transparent provision of this indicator through government channels will support the development of policies to address alcohol consumption in the country.

Transparency is what states make of it: whose climate priorities are reflected in the Paris Agreement’s enhanced transparency framework?

ABSTRACT In this article, we examine the contestations and compromises that underpin the Paris Agreement’s enhanced transparency framework, with the aim to analyze whose climate action priorities are reflected in these arrangements. Key mandatory obligations of the transparency framework relate to submission of greenhouse gas inventories and reporting and review of mitigation-related climate actions. Less analyzed are the non-mitigation focused transparency provisions, particularly those relating to adaptation, loss and damage and financial support, all of which are of key importance to developing countries. We address this research gap here by unpacking what different groups of countries desired with regard to these less examined aspects of the enhanced transparency framework, in the lead-up to finanalization of the Paris Agreement in 2015, and the nature of the political compromises reached on each. Furthermore, we analyze how these agreed transparency provisions are being operationalized since 2015. We find that many of the compromises reached on the scope of the enhanced transparency framework, but perhaps even more so in its subsequent operationalization, marginalize certain aspects of reporting and review that are of the highest priority to developing countries. These include, for example, reporting on adaptation needs, on having voluntary information on loss and damage be reviewed by international experts, and having access to comparable and actionable reporting on support provided by developed countries. This highlights the need for future research to assess the domestic consequences of engaging in global climate transparency arrangements for developing countries; and whether and how such engagement aligns with domestic priorities.

자유무역협정(FTA)의 투명성 논의와 부패방지 조치

Among the 21 FTA agreements concluded (signed) by Korea between 2003 and 2021, there are 16 agreements that constitute the transparency chapter. The transparency chapter of the FTA requires the Parties to clearly implement the Agreement and to promulgate relevant domestic laws and administrative procedures so that the Parties' stakeholders can recognize and respond to each other. It also specifies retrial and administrative execution of appeals for matters subject to the agreement, and stipulates mutual provision of information on administrative measures that may have a practical impact on the operation of the agreement. The strongest ‘anti-corruption’ provisions that guarantee transparency are included only in the Korea-US FTA and the Korea-Cambodia FTA. It was specified that the two countries would cooperate and reaffirm their commitment to eradicate bribery and corruption in trade and investment. The Korea-EU FTA uniquely added a ‘non-discrimination’ clause. The discussion on transparency of the FTA concluded by Korea can be evaluated as having established minimum procedural measures to prevent corruption, but it is judged to be insufficient to strengthen substantive transparency. Even after Korea concluded FTAs with major trading partners, the number and proportion of complaints filed for dumping or unfair trade practices such as subsidy showed an increasing trend, which can be inferred that the effective influence of the FTA's transparency provisions was not effective. You can. In order to effectively strengthen transparency while promoting free trade, domestic follow-up measures to prevent corruption must be linked to the FTA.

Trends in Knowledge Management within Open Government

In realizing the aspirations as a democratic nation, the provision of high-quality information transparency by the government is essential, especially for the legislative body as the people's representation. To transform information into a fundamental consideration for public policies, effective knowledge management is needed from the community, who act as active users of this information transparency. This study aims to analyze the trends in research concerning knowledge management and open government. Data sources were obtained through the Web of Science for publications from 2019 to 2023, focusing on the fields of political science, management, and social reform. The applied method utilized bibliometric analysis with tools such as VOSviewer and Biblioshiny. The study's results identified a total of 2251 keywords, which were then refined to 259 keywords through data selection. From the VOSviewer analysis, the study yielded 1144 links and 4 clusters, indicating the interconnectedness among keywords. This interconnectedness was further illustrated through Network Visualization, Overlay Visualization, and Density Visualization. Meanwhile, the Biblioshiny analysis, conducted using the R Application, involved visualizations like WordCloud, TreeMap, and Trend Topics related to the keywords.

As clear as mud: Assessing the relationship between proposed pay transparency mechanisms and data protection obligations in EU law

This article considers the provisions of the EU's proposed pay transparency Directive and comments upon their potential for uncovering and rectifying pay imbalances. We note the necessity of pay transparency measures, for full realisation of the right to equal pay for equal work or work of equal value, given that information access inequality is usually present between employee and employer. Whilst many of the innovations in the proposed provisions are commendable and desirable, we see several obstacles to success in the drafting of the proposed articles. Specifically, regarding the most important transparency provisions—the requirement to report on gender pay gaps, and the right to request and receive comparator pay data—the ease with which concerns over a potential clash with data protection obligations has been dismissed is concerning. In light of the jurisprudence of the Court of Justice of the European Union on data protection obligations, and the fallibility of data anonymisation techniques, we predict a tension between these two sets of provisions that has not been entirely precluded by the drafting of the new pay transparency directive.

Factors Affecting the Public Intention to Repeat the COVID-19 Vaccination: Implications for Vaccine Communication.

Although most of the pandemic-related mandatory restrictions have been lifted or eased, vaccination is still recommended as an effective measure to minimize the damage from COVID-19 infection. Since COVID-19 eradication is unlikely, it is necessary to understand the factors affecting the public's vaccination intention when COVID-19 vaccination is continuously recommended. This study aims to explore the factors that affect the intention to repeat the COVID-19 vaccination in South Korea. An online survey was conducted in January 2022 with adults living in Gyeonggi-do, South Korea. In a hierarchical logistic regression analysis, sociodemographic factors, COVID-19 infection-related factors, COVID-19 vaccination-related factors, sociocultural factors, and communication factors were taken into account. In this study, more than three-quarters (78.1%) of Koreans were willing to repeat the COVID-19 vaccination. People who had high-risk perceptions, had been vaccinated against COVID-19 at least once, had more authoritarian attitudes, regarded the vaccination as a social responsibility, and had positive attitudes toward health authorities' regular briefings were more likely to repeat the vaccination. In contrast, those who directly or indirectly experienced COVID-19 vaccine side effects and who showed psychological reactance against the government's vaccination recommendation were less likely to repeat the vaccination. Our research indicates that empathetic communication, promotion of the prosocial aspect of vaccination, and regular and transparent provision of vaccine information are essential for promoting the intention to repeat the COVID-19 vaccination.

Reclaiming transparency: contesting the logics of secrecy within the AI Act

AbstractTransparency is widely acknowledged as a core value in the governance of artificial intelligence (AI) technologies. However, scholarship on AI technologies and their regulation often casts this need for transparency in terms of requirements for the explanation of algorithmic outputs and/or decisions produced with the involvement of opaque black-box AI systems. Our article argues that this discourse has re-interpreted and reshaped transparency in fundamental ways away from its original meaning. The target of transparency – in most cases, the provider of AI software – determines and shapes what is made visible to the outside world, and there is no external check on the validity and accuracy of such mediated accounts and explanations, opening transparency up for manipulation. Through a theoretically informed and critical analysis of the transparency provisions in the European Union’s AI Act proposal, the article shows that the substitution of transparency with mediated explanations faces important technical constraints, creates opportunities and incentives for both providers and public-sector users of AI systems to adopt opaque practices, and reinforces secrecy requirements that gag accountability in practice. An approach to transparency as disclosure thus becomes necessary, even if not sufficient in and of itself, to ensure the accountable development and use of AI technologies in the European Union. Transparency needs to be reclaimed as a core concept, accountability tailored and reinforced and the necessity for secrecy re-examined and cordoned off.

A Modular and Portable Black Box Recorder for Increased Transparency of Autonomous Service Robots

Autonomous service robots have great potential to support humans in tasks they cannot perform due to, amongst others, time constraints, work overload, or staff shortages. An important step for such service robots to be trusted or accepted by society is the provision of transparency. Its purpose is not only to communicate what a robot is doing according to the human interaction partners' needs, it should also regard social and legal requirements. A black box recorder (inspired by flight recorders) increases the system's transparency by facilitating the investigation of the cause of an incident, clarifying responsibilities, or improving the user's understanding about the robot. In this work we propose the needed requirements of such a black box recorder for increased transparency of autonomous service robots, based on the related work. Further, we present a new modular and portable black box recorder design meeting these requirements. The applicability of the system is evaluated based on real-world robot data, using the realized open-source reference implementation.

Provision of transparency of supply chains in the context of achieving sustainable development goals

Methods. The results are obtained with the following methods: analysis and synthesis were applied to state a problem, to formulate research tasks; scientific abstraction, comparison were used in determining the essence of the concept of supply chain transparency, in defining the benefits of ensuring the transparency of supply chains; methods of general and particular, analogy were applied to group the consumer companies according to the level of the transparency of their supply chains. Results. The issues of ensuring the supply chains transparency of the consumer companies are studied. The urgency and importance of these issues are justified from the point of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). The essence of a concept of «supply chain transparency» is investigated at the fundamental and applied levels. The approach to grouping the consumer companies by the level of transparency of their supply chains is justified. Four groups of companies have been identified, namely, absolute majority; early majority; early adopters, and innovators, as well as the characteristics (parameters) of a company belonging to each of them. Attention is focused on the fact that meeting standards of sustainable development at various levels of the supply chain is an extremely important issue. It has been established that the requirements for ensuring transparency depend on the category of users of supply chain information – they are higher for governments or international non-governmental organizations than for local communities or for the end consumers. The obtained results made it possible to specify the advantages of ensuring the supply chains transparency of consumer companies. Novelty. The advantages of ensuring the supply chains transparency of the consumer companies in the context of the actualization of the concept of sustainable development have been substantiated. Practical value. Specifying particular advantages of ensuring supply chains transparency of the consumer companies helps increase the level of awareness of the business leaders and stimulate their interest in achieving the goals of sustainable development.

Legal support for improving transparency of the asset recovery and management agency’s activities

The purpose of the article is to study the legal basis for ARMA and submit the proposals to improve the transparency of this agency. The subject of the study is the activities of ARMA from the standpoint of transparency. Methodology. Methodological tools for the study are selected according to objectives, specifics of the object and subject matter of the research: dialectical method, system and structural method, dogmatic and legal method, comparative and legal method; logical and legal method; method of generalization. Research results. The article analyzes the legal provision of transparency of ARMA’s activities. The problematic issues are identified and the areas for improvement in the legal framework for ARMA’s transparency are suggested. The analysis of current normative and legal regulation of ARMA interaction with other executive bodies is performed. Practical meaning. The author’s definition of transparency of ARMA’s activity is proposed. Value / originality. The ways to improve the transparency of ARMA’s activities in Ukraine are proposed.

Understanding pledge and review: learning from analogies to the Paris Agreement review mechanisms

ABSTRACT This article draws lessons for the effectiveness of the Paris Agreement’s pledge and review mechanisms from the performance of comparable review mechanisms established under other international treaties. The article employs systematic evidence synthesis methods to review the existing literature on international review mechanisms in the human rights, trade, labour, and monetary policy fields and identifies six common factors influencing their performance. Applying these findings to the Paris Agreement, the analysis finds that its review mechanisms incorporate many of these factors. In particular, they combine both expert and peer review, allow for repeated interaction and capacity building, and facilitate the regular and transparent provision of information. The comparative analysis also highlights two major deficiencies of the Paris Agreement: the absence of procedures to assess the adequacy of national pledges and actions taken to implement them, and resource constraints in carrying out a complex and arduous review process. Active engagement of non-state actors with review mechanisms is identified as a potential remedy to these shortcomings. However, the overall experience of other regimes suggests that, on their own, review mechanisms provide few incentives for states to undertake significant policy changes. Rather, the political context of each regime conditions the performance of review mechanisms. We therefore conclude that the Paris Agreement’s review mechanisms alone are unlikely to bring about the necessary ratcheting up of climate policy ambitions. Key policy insights Review mechanism performance relies on six factors that are common across international agreements: the ability of the mechanism to solicit accurate information, the involvement of experts and state peers in the review process, the ability to ensure repeated interaction, the institutional capacity to carry out the review, the transparency of the review process and its outputs, and the salience and practicality of the outcomes produced by the review. The Paris Agreement’s strengths lie in its rules designed to facilitate the transparent provision of information, the inclusion of both expert and peer review, its facilitation of repeated interaction and in providing support to build the reporting capacities of states. The Paris Agreement severely restricts the salience and practicality of its review outcomes by prohibiting an assessment of the adequacy of national pledges. It remains uncertain whether the UNFCCC secretariat’s capacity and resources will suffice to carry out the arduous review task.

When, how, and what kind of information should Internet service providers disclose? A study on the transparency that users want

An increasing number of countries have been adopting network neutrality regulations since 2012. In particular, most countries that have adopted network neutrality regulations included the principle of transparency. Among these countries, Poland, Portugal, Spain, and Sweden introduced transparency provisions although provisions were not made for discriminatory traffic management, which proves the importance of transparency in Internet management. However, each country’s transparency policy only mentions the transparent disclosure of telecommunication service providers’ network management; it does not specifically suggest the method or time of disclosure. To the best of our knowledge, although perceptions of transparency accepted by Internet users may differ, regardless of actual transparency, investigations regarding transparency from the consumer perspective are lacking. In this study, important attributes and levels are selected for Internet transparency, user data is collected using a conjoint method, and collected data is analyzed via mixed logit. In doing so, we endeavor to determine, which perceptual transparency has the best value from the user’s perspective.

Construction and Characterization of Optical Orthogonal Codes (n,w,1) for Fast Frequency Hopping-Optical Code Division Multiple Access

This paper investigates a new combinatorial construction approach based on cyclic difference packings for the construction of an optical orthogonal code that is suitable as a time spreading sequence for fast frequency hopping optical code division multiple access (OCDM) systems. The proposed construction provides a solution to the electrical decoding delay problem when compared to its optical counterpart, as well as other optimization issues. The criteria for optimizing the performance of such an OCDMA system are provided, namely: the flexibility and simplicity in constructing the optimal code for any length and weight, a reduction in the encoding/decoding complexity that complies with changes in the fast frequency hopping system, and the provision of system transfer transparency, a decoding rule that exploits the embedded asymmetric error correcting capability of the code. Our neighbor difference approach refers to the partition of different solutions into sub-classes, given in the correlation matrix form. It takes into account both direct and recursive combinatorial code construction methods, and the resulting characteristics are evaluated accordingly. A performance analysis based on the OCDMA channel is given, and a comparison with other difference family solutions is performed.

OPENNESS AND TRANSPARENCY OF PUBLIC PROCUREMENT: PERSPECTIVES OF LEGISLATIVE PROVISIONS

Abstract. The article is devoted to the determination of the prospects for legislative provision of openness and transparency for public procurement. As emphasized, the national legislation and the practice of its application should continue to develop in the direction of ensuring the openness and transparency of public procurement. The author analyzed and pointed out the methods of unscrupulous procurement participants to hide information, distinguished technical and technological approaches to reducing the informativeness of procurement data to its participants. It was concluded that the prospects of legislative provision of openness and transparency of public procurement are to less extent in increasing the amount of information placed in public access, but to more extent in improving its structure and mechanisms to apply in work. Keywords: public procurement; principles of public procurement; openness; transparency; hiding information about public procurement; closing documentation from copying and contextual search; difficulty to read tender documentation; making changes to the tender documentation.

Developing Conversational Agents for Use in Criminal Investigations

The adoption of artificial intelligence (AI) systems in environments that involve high risk and high consequence decision-making is severely hampered by critical design issues. These issues include system transparency and brittleness, where transparency relates to (i) the explainability of results and (ii) the ability of a user to inspect and verify system goals and constraints; and brittleness, (iii) the ability of a system to adapt to new user demands. Transparency is a particular concern for criminal intelligence analysis, where there are significant ethical and trust issues that arise when algorithmic and system processes are not adequately understood by a user. This prevents adoption of potentially useful technologies in policing environments. In this article, we present a novel approach to designing a conversational agent (CA) AI system for intelligence analysis that tackles these issues. We discuss the results and implications of three different studies; a Cognitive Task Analysis to understand analyst thinking when retrieving information in an investigation, Emergent Themes Analysis to understand the explanation needs of different system components, and an interactive experiment with a prototype conversational agent. Our prototype conversational agent, named Pan, demonstrates transparency provision and mitigates brittleness by evolving new CA intentions. We encode interactions with the CA with human factors principles for situation recognition and use interactive visual analytics to support analyst reasoning. Our approach enables complex AI systems, such as Pan, to be used in sensitive environments, and our research has broader application than the use case discussed.

Modern Slavery Disclosure Regulation and Global Supply Chains: Insights from Stakeholder Narratives on the UK Modern Slavery Act

The purpose of this article is to problematise a particular social transparency and disclosure regulation in the UK, that transcend national boundaries in order to control (modern) slavery in supply chains operating in the developing world. Drawing on notions from the regulatory and sociology literature, i.e. transparency and normativity, and by interviewing anti-slavery activists and experts, this study explores the limitations of the disclosure and transparency requirements of the UK Modern Slavery Act and, more specifically, how anti-slavery activists experience and interpret the new regulations and the regulators’ implementation of the regulation. This research found limited confidence among anti-slavery activists regarding the Act’s call for transparency in relation to the elimination of slavery from global supply chains. The research also found that the limits of the transparency provisions within the Act appear to hinder the attainment of normativity. This study provides new and unique insights into the critical role that social activists play in exposing the lack of corporate transparency and failures of responsibility to protect workers within global supply chains.

Nudging openly – An experimental analysis of nudge transparency in a public goods setting

Abstract Around the world, policy makers and public authorities are increasingly turning to behaviorally informed interventions (“nudges”) in order to help tackle important contexts of public policy. Despite their impressive merit record, these policy tools have been heavily criticized as being obscure and manipulative, thus facing challenges for their legitimate assertion in the regulatory toolkit. In this study, we seek to assess whether transparency over the use of such interventions may constitute a viable way of addressing these ethical concerns, and focus particularly on the potentially moderating role of something we call “status quo experience”, i. e. subjects’ understanding of the behavioral consequences of different choice architectures. We conduct a laboratory experiment, whereby subjects play three rounds of a public good game, the first of which defaults them towards a fully non-cooperative contribution, while the rest default them towards a fully cooperative one. Subjects in our treatment groups further receive an “informational shock” at varying points in time, disclosing how and why a fully cooperative default contribution is being used. We find that providing subjects with informational disclosure about the nudge intervention did not result in significantly different aggregate behavioral measurements between control and treatment groups. This seems to be independent of status quo experience and of the timing of transparency provision. We nonetheless find some indication that the latter could help sustain cooperation over time.

The right to contest automated decisions under the General Data Protection Regulation: Beyond the so‐called “right to explanation”

AbstractThe right to contest automated decisions as provided by Article 22 of the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) is a due process provision with concrete transparency implications. Based on this, the paper in hand aims, first, to provide an interpretation of Art 22 and the right to contest (as the key provision in determining the contours of transparency in relation to automated decisions under the GDPR); second, to provide a systematic account of possible administrative, procedural, and technical mechanisms (transparency measures) that could be deployed for the purpose contesting automated decisions; and third, to examine the compatibility of these mechanisms with the GDPR. Following the introduction, Part II starts with an analysis of the newly enacted right to contest solely automated decisions as provided under Article 22 of the GDPR. This part identifies the right to contest in Article 22 as the core remedy, with inherent transparency requirements which are foundational for due process. Setting the right to contest as the backbone of protection against the adverse effects of solely automated decisions, Part III focuses on certain key points and provisions under the GDPR, which are described as the 1st layer (human‐intelligible) transparency. This part explores to what extent “information and access” rights (Articles 13, 14, and 15) could satisfy the transparency requirements for the purposes of contestation as explained in Part II. Next, Part IV briefly identifies the limits of 1st layer transparency – explaining how technical complexity together with competition and integrity‐related concerns render human‐level transparency either infeasible or legally impossible. In what follows, Part V conceptualizes a 2nd layer of transparency which consists of further administrative, procedural, and technical measures (i.e., design choices facilitating interpretability, institutional oversight, and algorithmic scrutiny). Finally, Part VI identifies four regulatory options, combining 1st and 2nd layer transparency measures to implement Article 22. The primary aim of the paper is to provide a systematic interpretation of Article 22 and examine how “the right to contest solely automated decisions” could help give meaning to the overall transparency provisions of the GDPR. With a view to transcend the current debates about the existence of a so‐called right to an explanation, the paper develops an interdisciplinary approach, focusing on the specific transparency implications of the “right to contest” as a remedy of procedural nature.

Effect of Corporate Transparency on Trust and Purchase Intention

There is a growing interest in ethical consumption, and consumers are demanding high levels of CSR for their companies. Transparent provision of corporate information among various areas of CSR is also an important topic in the recent consumption situation. In the global fashion industry, it is also a type of radical corporate transparency and ethical management, led by several advanced startups such as Everlane. As a result, the production process is being disclosed. This study empirically analyzes the influence of this fashion product process transparency on the consumer evaluation of the company. According to a survey of 200 Korean respondents, the transparency of the presented fashion firms had a positive effect on corporate trust and purchase intention. It was confirmed that it has. On the other hand, consumer involvement, which has been discussed as an important personal attribute in the associated consumption environment, has no significant moderating effect. In other words, consumers' subjective corporate ethics involvement did not have a significant influence on their corporate transparency evaluation.