An increasing number of complex and important decisions are now being made with the aid of opaque algorithms. This has led to calls from both theorists and legislators for the implementation of a right to an explanation for algorithmic decisions. In this paper, we argue that, in most cases and for most kinds of explanations, there is no such right. After differentiating a number of different things that might be meant by a ‘right to an explanation,’ we argue that, for the most plausible and popular versions (a right to an explanation for a specific bureaucratic decision, a right to an explanation grounded in public reason considerations, or a right to a higher‐level explanation of an entire system of automated decision‐making), such a right is either superfluous, impossible to obtain, or not the best way to secure the relevant normative goods. We also argue that proponents of a right to an explanation carve off certain kinds of automated decisions as requiring more justification than others in similar areas of social (and natural) science policy, a demarcation we argue is unjustified. While there will be some cases where an explanation is the only thing that can secure an important normative good (e.g. when an explanation is the only thing that would catch an unjustified individual decision), we argue these cases are too rare and scattered to ground something as weighty as a right to an explanation.

中文翻译：

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无权要求解释

现在，越来越多的复杂和重要的决策是在不透明算法的帮助下做出的。这导致理论家和立法者都呼吁实施对算法决策的解释权。在本文中，我们认为，在大多数情况下，对于大多数类型的解释，没有这种权利。在区分了“解释权”可能意味着的许多不同事物之后，我们认为，对于最合理和最流行的版本（对特定官僚决策的解释权，基于公共理性考虑的解释权，或对整个自动决策系统进行更高层次解释的权利）， 这种权利要么是多余的，要么是不可能获得的，要么不是获得相关规范商品的最佳方式。我们还认为，解释权的支持者将某些类型的自动决策排除在外，因为在社会（和自然）科学政策的类似领域，需要比其他决策更多的正当理由，我们认为这种划分是不合理的。虽然在某些情况下，解释是唯一可以确保重要规范性利益的东西（例如，当解释是唯一可以抓住不合理的个人决定的东西时），但我们认为这些情况太罕见且分散，无法作为解释权这样重要的东西的基础。