# On Transparency and Accountability of Smart Assistants in Smart Cities
## 1 Introduction  
Transparency and traceability of modern computing systems have emerged as the top strategic trends due to the rapid spread of complex smart city technologies, and the issues that they are introducing [1]. This will become even more serious when Artificial Intelligence (AI) based smart solutions involve in all aspects of life in the smart city. Transparency of a smart city system is associated with an appropriate record of its objectives and subsequent implementation and validation [2]. The level of transparency in the design and implementation of such a system can affect developers, end-users, society, experts/regulators, and deployers [3]. It enables end-users to understand the working of the system and thus builds their trust in technology. Developers of a transparent system can find its errors and fix them. Transparency promotes the social acceptability of technology and helps experts and regulators to make sure that the system works as claimed and that it complies with the regulatory frameworks. Finally, deployers of a transparent smart city system have confidence in its fairness and legality. Transparency makes the working of these systems explainable, which is a basic condition for ensuring their accountability [4]. Therefore, transparency errors in the design and implementation of smart city systems and their potential harms to individuals or society need to be identified. Accountability is the possibility of making someone accountable for what they have done. For example, the privacy and security decisions of users can be influenced, or their data can becollected stealthily [5; 6]. It is accountability that forces those in the data business to operate within the boundaries of regulatory frameworks. Different regulatory frameworks include provisions in this regard. For example, the thus far most comprehensible data protection regulation, the European Union's General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) lays the principles of \"lawfulness, fairness and transparency\", \"purpose limitation\", \"data minimization\", \"accuracy\", \"storage limitation\", and \"integrity and confidentiality\" and holds data controllers (entities involved in data collection, processing, storage, and use) accountable for demonstrating the compliance with these principles [7]. Data controllers are obliged to set up technical and organizational measures for data and privacy protection of data subjects and may be held accountable for failing to do so. Data controllers are also responsible for demonstrating the effectiveness of such measures. Transparency and accountability of smart systems play a vital role in the privacy protection of smart city inhabitants. The competing interests of different systems and service providers can motivate them to over-collect user and device data with possibly a severe impact on the privacy of data subjects and the security of smart city systems in a world where \"if you torture the data long enough, it will confess to anything\" [8; 9]. Transparency of these systems and the accountability mechanisms ensure that their users are not tricked, cheated, and violated. Making the details of a computing system transparent to its users lets them make informed privacy and security decisions while choosing the systems and interacting with it [10]. The fear of punitive actions bind system and service providers to comply with the requirements [11; 12; 13]. The GDPR particularly emphasizes the transparency and accountability of data collection and processing systems [7]. Recitals 39 and 58 set lawfulness and fairness of data collection and processing conditional to the transparency of data collection, usage, consultation, or otherwise processing (immediate or future) and the extent of processing to the data subjects. GDPR requires that any information and communication relating to the processing of personal data collection should be easily accessible and easy to understand, and conveyed using concise, clear, and understandable language. Even visualization aids should be used, if necessary.