Transparency as an ethical safeguard

Abstract

Transparency seems to represent a solution to many ethic issues generated by systems that collect implicit data from users to model the user themselves based on programmed criteria. However, making such systems transparent - besides being a major technical challenge - risks raising more issues than it solves, actually reducing the user’s ability to protect themselves while trying to put them in control. Are transparent systems only a chimera, which provides a seemingly useful information pastiche while failing to make sense upon closer examination? Scholars from ethics and cognitive science share their thoughts on how to achieve genuine transparency and the value of transparency.