Recent rapid advances in Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Machine Learning
have raised many questions about the regulatory and governance mechanisms for
autonomous machines. Many commentators, scholars, and policy-makers now call
for ensuring that algorithms governing our lives are transparent, fair, and
accountable. Here, I propose a conceptual framework for the regulation of AI
and algorithmic systems. I argue that we need tools to program, debug and
maintain an algorithmic social contract, a pact between various human
stakeholders, mediated by machines. To achieve this, we can adapt the concept
of human-in-the-loop (HITL) from the fields of modeling and simulation, and
interactive machine learning. In particular, I propose an agenda I call
society-in-the-loop (SITL), which combines the HITL control paradigm with
mechanisms for negotiating the values of various stakeholders affected by AI
systems, and monitoring compliance with the agreement. In short, `SITL = HITL +
Social Contract.'Comment: (in press), Ethics of Information Technology, 201
