About the report 'Automating Society – Taking Stock of Automated Decision-Making in the EU'

Systems for automated decision-making or decision support (ADM) are on the rise in EU countries: Profiling job applicants based on their personal emails in Finland, allocating treatment for patients in the public health system in Italy, sorting the unemployed in Poland, automatically identifying children vulnerable to neglect in Denmark, detecting welfare fraud in the Netherlands, credit scoring systems in many EU countries – the range of applications has broadened to almost all aspects of daily life.

This begs a lot of questions: Do we need new laws? Do we need new oversight institutions? Who do we fund to develop answers to the challenges ahead? Where should we invest? How do we enable citizens – patients, employees, consumers – to deal with this?

For the report “Automating Society – Taking Stock of Automated Decision-Making in the EU”, our experts have looked at the situation at the EU level but also in 12 Member States: Belgium, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Italy, Netherlands Poland, Slovenia, Spain, Sweden and the UK. We assessed not only the political discussions and initiatives in these countries but also present a section “ADM in Action” for all states, listing examples of automated decision-making already in use. This is the first time a comprehensive study has been done on the state of automated decision-making in Europe.

https://algorithmwatch.org/automating-society

AlgorithmWatch

AlgorithmWatch is a non-profit research and advocacy organisation, funded by private foundations and donations by individuals. Our mission is to evaluate and shed light on algorithmic decision-making processes that have a relevant impact on individuals and society, meaning they are used either to predict or prescribe human action or to make decisions automatically. We analyse the effects of algorithmic decision-making processes on human behaviour, point out ethical conflicts and explain the characteristics and effects of complex algorithmic decision-making processes to a general public. AlgorithmWatch serves as a platform linking experts from different cultures and disciplines focused on the study of algorithmic decision-making processes and their social impact; and in order to maximise the benefits of algorithmic decision-making processes for society, we assist in developing ideas and strategies to achieve intelligibility of these processes – with a mix of technologies, regulation, and suitable oversight institutions.

https://algorithmwatch.org/en/