The Fallacy of AI Functionality
It addresses the oversight of functionality in AI policy, which is crucial for preventing harm to affected communities, though it is incremental in focusing on a specific aspect of AI deployment.
The paper tackles the problem of AI systems often failing to function properly, analyzing case studies to create a taxonomy of functionality issues and arguing that functionality is a necessary first step in policy to protect communities from harm.
Deployed AI systems often do not work. They can be constructed haphazardly, deployed indiscriminately, and promoted deceptively. However, despite this reality, scholars, the press, and policymakers pay too little attention to functionality. This leads to technical and policy solutions focused on "ethical" or value-aligned deployments, often skipping over the prior question of whether a given system functions, or provides any benefits at all. To describe the harms of various types of functionality failures, we analyze a set of case studies to create a taxonomy of known AI functionality issues. We then point to policy and organizational responses that are often overlooked and become more readily available once functionality is drawn into focus. We argue that functionality is a meaningful AI policy challenge, operating as a necessary first step towards protecting affected communities from algorithmic harm.