Read later Summary: Opacity in AI used to be an academic problem - now it's everyone's problem. In this piece, I define the issues at stake, and how they tie into the ongoing discussion on AI ethics. (frankie's - shutterstock) Opacity in AI is a formal, academic description of what is more commonly referred to as, "What the heck is the algorithm doing?" It's a problem that is at the root of many ethical issues with AI. It appears as a robust classification and ranking mechanisms, such as search engines, credit card fraud detection, market segmentation, spam filters, all used in insurance or loan qualification advertising or credit. These mechanisms of classification are calculated on computational algorithms, most often machine learning algorithms.