The legally mandated approximate language about AI

In light of the current explosion of application of machine learning in data analysis and inference, we examine a particular challenge raised by the new EU General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR). The challenge we address pertains particularly to the demand that analyses of a person's data must be comprehensible to that person. While there is a long tradition in viewing the world in terms of objects and properties in intuitive ways, recent decades have entertained a tension between more rule-based theories of mind (e.g., the Representational Theory of Mind) and more holistic approaches (e.g., Connectionism). While both approaches have merit, one seems to depart too much from a classical understanding of "knowing" to adequately satisfy the imminent legal reality, and the other seems to be incapable of adequately capturing modern data analysis (as of yet). As a solution to this predicament we propose a pragmatic compromise based on argumentation theory which seems to be able to provide a solid foundation in classical concepts, while at the same time permitting enthymematic presuppositions. We argue that developing a framework for explaining machine behavior in terms of abstract argumentation theory can address this dilemma -- provide sufficient expressivity while remaining true to established definitions of epistemology -- to satisfy the conditions of the GDPR and motivating concerns

Gerrymandering and Compactness: Implementation Flexibility and Abuse

The shape of an electoral district may suggest whether it was drawn with political motivations, or gerrymandered. For this reason, quantifying the shape of districts, in particular their compactness, is a key task in politics and civil rights. A growing body of literature suggests and analyzes compactness measures mathematically, but little consideration has been given to how these scores should be calculated in practice. Here, we consider the effects of a number of decisions that must be made in interpreting and implementing a set of popular compactness scores. We show that the choices made in quantifying compactness may themselves become political tools, with seemingly innocuous decisions leading to disparate scores. We show that when the full range of implementation flexibility is used, it can be abused to make clearly gerrymandered districts appear quantitatively reasonable. This complicates using compactness as a legislative or judicial standard to counteract unfair redistricting practices. This paper accompanies the release of packages in C++, Python, and R which correctly, efficiently, and reproducibly calculate a variety of compactness scores.Comment: 10 pages, 17 figures, 1 tabl

Taj Becker, M.D. v. Utah Department of Health, Division of Health Care Finance (Medicaid) : Brief of Appellant

BRIEF OF APPELLANT TAJ BECKER, M.D. Appeal from the Judgment of the Fifth District Court in and for Washington County, State of Utah - the Honorable G. Rand Beacham Civil No. 020501574 Appellate Case No. 20060495 C.A

Understanding Ethics-Quality Linkages In The Private And Public Sectors

Customers ultimately define a product, while quality is best defined from the demand side. Thus, quality may be considered a weighted sum of quality attributes, ai. This summation may be partitioned in various ways. The most plausible partitioning for both private industry and the public sectors involves a natural temporal and practical ordering for the components. Managers must consider the demands of many legitimate internal and external stakeholders, minimally satisfying all and further satisfying the most salient. There are linkages of particular ai to specific stakeholder groups. Technological standards and quality grading inform and regulate production by employees. Although quality maximization is often an excellent strategy, there is no universal, overarching ethical imperative to maximize overall quality. Rather, in the equations for both economic sectors, each component successively presents a distinctive set of demand related ethical issues

Digital Rights Management and the Process of Fair Use

Producers of digital media works increasingly employ technological protection measures, commonly referred to as digital rights management (or DRM ) technologies, that prevent the works from being accessed or used except upon conditions the producers themselves specify. These technologies have come under criticism for interfering with the rights users enjoy under copyright law, including the right to engage in fair uses of the DRM-protected works. Most DRM mechanisms are not engineered to include exceptions for fair use, and user circumvention of the DRM may violate the Digital Millennium Copyright Act even if the use for which the circumvention occurs is itself noninfringing. The academic literature on fair use in digital media has suggested several possible ways to resolve the tension between fair use on the one hand and DRM on the other. Among the more provocative possibilities is that DRM technologies themselves may evolve to incorporate greater built-in protections for end-user rights. This article examines several such proposals and finds that they are not likely to provide users with the same measure of protections for fair use of copyrighted works that exists in the offline world. The failure of these proposals, however, does not suggest that the broader goal of protecting fair use rights in digital media is unattainable. It is possible to advance much more closely towards that goal by altering the design philosophy of DRM technologies to focus more on the processes by which fair uses occur and less on attempting to replicate the substantive law of fair use in machine-administrable form. The article concludes by outlining one possible system engineered to protect the process of fair use

Revitalizing the Adversary System in Family Law

The way in which families resolve disputes has undergone dramatic change over the last decade. Scholars have focused much attention on a number of substantive law changes that have contributed to this transformation. These include the changing definitions of marriage, parenthood, and families. But less attention has been paid to the enormous changes that have taken place in the processes surrounding family dispute resolution. These changes have been even more comprehensive and have fundamentally altered the way in which disputing families interact with the legal system. Both the methods and goals of legal intervention for families in conflict have changed, altering the roles of judges and lawyers and moving much of dispute resolution out of the courtroom. These developments have profound implications for the family justice system. They also reflect a broader jurisprudential shift away from the traditional values of the adversary system in both the civil and, to a lesser extent, the criminal justice system. The impact of this shift in this context has not been fully explored, particularly the direct and harmful impact of such changes on low income litigants. Part One of this Article describes the changes that have contributed to this paradigm shift. Part Two explores the fundamental ways in which the shift alters the traditional adversary system and the risks presented by these shifts. Finally, the Article offers proposals to assist in weighing the relative benefits of the therapeutic and adversarial approaches. Countering the trend in recent reform efforts, the Article argues for a reinvestment in the adversary system to design a justice system that serves all families

Market integration and convergence to the law of one price : evidence from the European car market.

This paper exploits the unique experiment of European market integration to investigate the relationship between integration and price convergence in international markets. Using a panel data set of car prices we examine how the process of integration has affected cross-country price dispersion in Europe. We find surprisingly strong evidence of convergence towards both the absolute and the relative versions of Purchasing Power Parity. Our analysis illuminates the main sources of segmentation in international markets and suggests the type of institutional changes that can successfully reduce it.Convergence; Integration; Law;