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Opacity

nounverified·updated May 18, 2026

The nature of some AI techniques whereby the inferential operations are complex, hidden, or otherwise opaque to their developers and end users in terms of providing an understanding of how classifications, recommendations, or actions are generated and what overall performance will be.

polysemousNational Security Commission on Artificial Intelligence: The Final Report

Senses

AI Glossary: Artificial intelligence, in so many words

A description of some deep learning systems [that] take an input and provide an output, but the calculations that occur in between are not easy for humans to interpret.

EU-U.S. Terminology and Taxonomy for Artificial Intelligence - Second Edition

When one or more features of an AI system, such as processes, the provenance of datasets, functions, output or behaviour are unavailable or incomprehensible to all stakeholders – usually an antonym for transparency.

Wordset Dictionary

the quality of being opaque to a degree

Wordset Dictionary

incomprehensibility resulting from obscurity of meaning

Wordset Dictionary

the phenomenon of not permitting the passage of electromagnetic radiation

Classifications

Entity Type

Vulnerability100%manual revieweval-seeds-v0.4-2026-05-14
Ddorianlast reviewed
OVERRIDE Capability→Vulnerability. Opacity is the undesirable systemic property.

Sensitivity

unclassified

Information Class

unclassified

Variants

synonym
black boxopaquenessunexplainable
plural
Opacities
possessive
Opacity's
pluralpossessive
Opacities'