AI Governance Engineer
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Recourse

By Updated

The ability of a person to obtain a different decision by changing inputs they can actually act on, such as income rather than age 1. Counterfactual explanations restricted to actionable features are its usual engineering form; a system can offer contestation and still leave no recourse.

Developed in
ch. 16, Counterfactual explanations
Chapters
ch. 16, Fairness & XAI · ch. 21, AI Laws Worldwide
Contrast with
Contestability
Source
1 numbered reference, listed below

Where it is used

4 chapters of the Body of Knowledge use the term. Each link opens the first section that does.

Recourse: mentions per chapter6 mentions of the term across 4 of the 23 chapters of the Body of Knowledge; the chapters the glossary cross-references are drawn solid.Cross-referenced chapterOther chapter08 Regulatory Map: 3 mentions08 Regulatory Map315 Deployment: 1 mention15 Deployment116 Fairness & XAI: 1 mention16 Fairness & XAI121 AI Laws Worldwide: 1 mention21 AI Laws Worldwide1No mentions in the other 19 chaptersSource: the Body of Knowledgev0.5.0
Recourse: mentions per chapter6 mentions of the term across 4 of the 23 chapters of the Body of Knowledge; the chapters the glossary cross-references are drawn solid.Cross-referenced chapterOther chapter000102030405060708 Regulatory Map: 3 mentions308101112131415 Deployment: 1 mention11516 Fairness & XAI: 1 mention1161718192021 AI Laws Worldwide: 1 mention1212223Source: the Body of Knowledge v0.5.0
Mentions per chapter How often each chapter names the term, with the chapters the glossary cross-references drawn solid. The longest bar is where to read the term in use; bars spread across many chapters mark a term that runs through the discipline.
Mentions as a table
Mentions of Recourse per chapter
ChapterMentionsCross-referenced
00 Preface0No
01 Definition0No
02 Why Now0No
03 Values & Principles0No
04 The Stack0No
05 Patterns0No
06 The Role0No
07 Maturity Model0No
08 Regulatory Map3No
10 Reading List0No
11 AI Defined0No
12 Governance Program0No
13 Risk Management0No
14 Development0No
15 Deployment1No
16 Fairness & XAI1Yes
17 Incidents0No
18 EU AI Act0No
19 Privacy & AI0No
20 Existing Law0No
21 AI Laws Worldwide1Yes
22 Principles & Standards0No
23 AI Agents0No
  • Counterfactual explanation

    An explanation that states the smallest change to the input that would have changed the outcome, restricted to features the person can actually change.

Sources

  1. [1] "Actionable Recourse in Linear Classification" (Ustun, Spangher and Liu; recourse as the ability to change a model's decision by altering actionable inputs; arXiv 1809.06514). arXiv. 2018-09-18. https://arxiv.org/abs/1809.06514 (verified: primary)

Definitions of legal terms paraphrase the cited text, which governs. Dated statements are as of .

Cite this term

García Aibar, J. (2026). Recourse. In AI Governance Engineering: The Thesis & Body of Knowledge (v0.5.0), Glossary. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.22956197. https://aigovernanceengineer.com/glossary/recourse. CC BY 4.0

BibTeX

@misc{aige2026recourse,
  author  = {Jorge García Aibar},
  title   = {{Recourse}},
  note    = {Glossary, AI Governance Engineering: The Thesis \& Body of Knowledge, version 0.5.0},
  year    = {2026},
  doi     = {10.5281/zenodo.22956197},
  url     = {https://aigovernanceengineer.com/glossary/recourse}
}