Like Circles in the Water: Responsibility as a System-Level Function

What eventually determines the semantics of algorithmic decision-making is not the program artefact, nor—if applicable—the data used to create it, but the preparatory (enabling) and consequent (enabled) practices holding in the environment (computational and human) in which such algorithmic procedure is embedded. The notion of responsibility captures a very similar construct: in all human societies actions are evaluated in terms of the consequences they could reasonably cause, and of the reasons that motivate them. But to what extent does this function exist in computational systems? The paper aims to sketch links between several of the approaches and concepts proposed for responsible computing, from AI to networking, identifying gaps and possible directions for operationalization.