'Put the Car on the Stand': SMT-based Oracles for Investigating Decisions

Fuente: arXiv
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Main Authors: Judson, Samuel, Elacqua, Matthew, Cano, Filip, Antonopoulos, Timos, Könighofer, Bettina, Shapiro, Scott J., Piskac, Ruzica
Format: Preprint
Published: 2023
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author Judson, Samuel
Elacqua, Matthew
Cano, Filip
Antonopoulos, Timos
Könighofer, Bettina
Shapiro, Scott J.
Piskac, Ruzica
author_facet Judson, Samuel
Elacqua, Matthew
Cano, Filip
Antonopoulos, Timos
Könighofer, Bettina
Shapiro, Scott J.
Piskac, Ruzica
contents Principled accountability in the aftermath of harms is essential to the trustworthy design and governance of algorithmic decision making. Legal theory offers a paramount method for assessing culpability: putting the agent 'on the stand' to subject their actions and intentions to cross-examination. We show that under minimal assumptions automated reasoning can rigorously interrogate algorithmic behaviors as in the adversarial process of legal fact finding. We model accountability processes, such as trials or review boards, as Counterfactual-Guided Logic Exploration and Abstraction Refinement (CLEAR) loops. We use the formal methods of symbolic execution and satisfiability modulo theories (SMT) solving to discharge queries about agent behavior in factual and counterfactual scenarios, as adaptively formulated by a human investigator. In order to do so, for a decision algorithm $\mathcal{A}$ we use symbolic execution to represent its logic as a statement $Π$ in the decidable theory $\texttt{QF_FPBV}$. We implement our framework and demonstrate its utility on an illustrative car crash scenario.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2305_05731
institution arXiv
publishDate 2023
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle 'Put the Car on the Stand': SMT-based Oracles for Investigating Decisions
Judson, Samuel
Elacqua, Matthew
Cano, Filip
Antonopoulos, Timos
Könighofer, Bettina
Shapiro, Scott J.
Piskac, Ruzica
Logic in Computer Science
Computers and Society
Programming Languages
Principled accountability in the aftermath of harms is essential to the trustworthy design and governance of algorithmic decision making. Legal theory offers a paramount method for assessing culpability: putting the agent 'on the stand' to subject their actions and intentions to cross-examination. We show that under minimal assumptions automated reasoning can rigorously interrogate algorithmic behaviors as in the adversarial process of legal fact finding. We model accountability processes, such as trials or review boards, as Counterfactual-Guided Logic Exploration and Abstraction Refinement (CLEAR) loops. We use the formal methods of symbolic execution and satisfiability modulo theories (SMT) solving to discharge queries about agent behavior in factual and counterfactual scenarios, as adaptively formulated by a human investigator. In order to do so, for a decision algorithm $\mathcal{A}$ we use symbolic execution to represent its logic as a statement $Π$ in the decidable theory $\texttt{QF_FPBV}$. We implement our framework and demonstrate its utility on an illustrative car crash scenario.
title 'Put the Car on the Stand': SMT-based Oracles for Investigating Decisions
topic Logic in Computer Science
Computers and Society
Programming Languages
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2305.05731