Opacity
nounid
5005·updated May 18, 2026verified
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.
polysemous
Classifications
Entity Type
Vulnerability100%manual revieweval-seeds-v0.4-2026-05-14
Sensitivity
unclassified
Information Class
unclassified
Variants
- synonym
- black boxopaquenessunexplainable
- plural
- Opacities
- possessive
- Opacity's
- pluralpossessive
- Opacities'
Framework definitions
- §1
- 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.
- §1
- 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.
EU-U.S. Terminology and Taxonomy for Artificial Intelligence - Second Edition1 senseview framework →
- §1
- 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.
- §1
- the quality of being opaque to a degree
- §2
- incomprehensibility resulting from obscurity of meaning
- §3
- the phenomenon of not permitting the passage of electromagnetic radiation
Outgoing relationships
No outgoing triples
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Incoming relationships
No incoming triples
No other term currently asserts a relationship to this one.