Entry 03 of 44
Transparency
transparere — trans (through) + parere (to appear, come into sight)
Latin
From Medieval Latin transparere: to show light through. Root concept: that which stands behind can be distinctly seen. Nothing obstructs the view.
Established meaning
In governance and law: the condition of being open to scrutiny; nothing relevant is hidden from appropriate oversight. Government transparency means the mechanisms of power are visible to those governed by them.
AI industry deployment
Publication of 'transparency reports' that disclose what the company chooses to disclose. Model cards listing selected capabilities. Blog posts describing safety processes. Training data, model weights, fine-tuning procedures, and deployment decisions are typically not disclosed.
Semantic gap
The obligation to show
Parere — that which stands behind must appear. Industry transparency means the company appears to be transparent, not that the underlying systems actually appear to scrutiny. The obligation to show has been replaced by the choice of what to show.
Institutional drift
Tech company "Transparency Reports," 2010–2013 → Google AI Principles, 2018 → Model Cards, 2019 → Gebru firing, December 2020
- 2010Tech company "Transparency Reports" establish template for selective disclosure.
- 2018Google publishes AI Principles including transparency as a value.
- 2019Model Cards framework published by Mitchell and Gebru — genuine tool; industry adopts format without substance.
- 2020December: Google fires Timnit Gebru after she raises training data transparency concerns.
- 2023System cards become industry standard — selected disclosure while training data and RLHF specifications remain proprietary.