Accountability and Big Data Analytics: Current Challenges Raised by Emerging Digital Technologies

Big data, artificial intelligence, machine learning and algorithmic systems are increasingly used for decision-making by private entities, public institutions, citizens and individual professionals. Although originally well-intended, these practices spark controversy over privacy, human rights and fairness and raise questions regarding the lack of accountability for their potential negative impacts. As these challenges are caused by a “web” of interrelated decisions taken by organisations, individuals, regulators and academics, a comprehensive understanding of accountability is a digital era requires integration of knowledge and insight from multiple disciplines. Therefore, in this paper we draw on literature from management, accounting, law, philosophy, computer and social science to address the question of how new technologies challenge the way accountability tends to be conceptualized by organisations, regulators, citizens and academic communities. We rely on a basic model for accountability which is conceptually rooted in the principal-agent model and analyse the implications of big data and AI for accountability for different stakeholder groups, one should consider the duality of the roles – the one of an accountor and the one of an accountee - that each stakeholder plays an accountability relationship.