A right to explanation for algorithmic credit decisions in the UK
Bibliographic record
Abstract
This article argues for a statutory right to explanation in automated credit decision-making in the UK, as transparency and accountability are central to the rule of law. First, from a moral standpoint, we demonstrate that there is a double level of distrust in financial services and algorithms. Algorithms are unpredictable and can make unreliable decisions. Algorithmic challenges such as bias, discrimination and unfairness are exacerbated by the opacity problem commonly known as the ‘black box’ phenomenon. The informed consent process in automated credit decision-making is thus incomplete, which requires an ex-post right to explanation for completing the informed consent procedure. Secondly, our doctrinal and comparative legal methodologies reveal that countries such as the USA, Canada, European Union, China and Poland already provide a right to explanation to credit applicants under certain circumstances. We also present new empirical evidence of a public desire to have a right to explanation for unsuccessful credit applications.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.024 | 0.103 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.001 | 0.000 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.005 | 0.025 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.013 | 0.008 |
| Open science | 0.001 | 0.008 |
| Research integrity | 0.011 | 0.007 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.009 | 0.001 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".