Knowledge Atlas · Reference
Glossary & ontology
Terms are defined once and translated with care — terminology must survive translation intact.
A
- Agonism
- A strand of democratic theory holding that political conflict is ineliminable and should be channelled between adversaries who respect shared rules, rather than aimed at rational consensus.
- AI dividend
- A proposal to distribute part of the returns from AI and automated production to members of a community.
- Algocracy
- A system in which algorithms structure and constrain how people act and take part in decisions, distinct from markets (which use prices) and bureaucracies (which use rules).
- Algorithmic accountability
- The obligation of those who deploy algorithmic systems to explain, justify and answer for their effects.
- Anchor institution
- A large, place-based organisation such as a hospital, university or local authority that is unlikely to relocate and whose employment and purchasing shape the local economy.
- Arbitration
- Resolving a dispute by an arbitrator the parties have agreed to, whose award is binding on them.
- Arrow's impossibility theorem
- Kenneth Arrow's result that, with three or more options, no rule turning individual rankings into a group ranking can satisfy a short list of fairness conditions at once without making someone a dictator.
- Automated decision-making
- Decisions about people made by technological means without meaningful human involvement.
- Automation bias
- The tendency of people to over-rely on automated recommendations, even when they are wrong.