Society‑in‑the‑Loop: Programming the Algorithmic Social Contract

Recent rapid advances in Artificial Intelli-gence (AI) and Machine Learning have raised many ques-tions about the regulatory and governance mechanisms for autonomous machines. Many commentators, scholars, and policy-makers now call for ensuring that algorithms govern-ing 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.’