Automated systems increasingly make decisions about people: who gets a loan, who passes the first stage of a recruitment process, who is pulled aside for an extra check at a border. The rules governing those systems already exist and keep expanding, but they are written in a language a few hundred specialists read.
This blog translates those rules. Not into general advice, but into vocabulary: the terms you need in order to understand a decision made about you, or to identify the obligations of the organisation you work for.
What you will find here
- Articles explaining one term at a time, built on documented cases, with the source named.
- A glossary of terms, in Romanian and in English.
- Template letters and internal documents you fill in and use directly.
First term: the automated decision
An automated decision is a decision produced by a system without a person actually assessing the case. It does not matter whether the system is called “artificial intelligence”, “scoring” or “a business rule” — what matters is whether the outcome reaches you without anyone having weighed it.
The distinction carries legal consequences. Article 22 of the General Data Protection Regulation sets a limit:
The data subject shall have the right not to be subject to a decision based solely on automated processing, including profiling, which produces legal effects concerning him or her or similarly significantly affects him or her.
The word that matters is “solely”
If an employee presses “approve” without being able to change the outcome, the decision remains automated. The safeguard is not the button; it is the real ability to intervene. Since February 2025, organisations that provide or deploy artificial intelligence systems have had an additional duty: to ensure a sufficient level of AI literacy among their own staff.
Two perspectives, the same rules
| For you | For your organisation |
|---|---|
| What did the system decide about me? | Which systems do we use, in which departments? |
| Can I ask for an explanation? | How do we place them in risk tiers? |
| Who can review the decision? | Who is accountable internally for each system? |
Material published here is informative. It is not legal advice and does not cover the specifics of every situation.
What you can do now
If you received a decision in recent months that nobody explained to you — a refusal, a classification, an automated rejection — write down the date and the form in which you received it. Those are the first two facts any request for an explanation asks for. Write to salut@explainable.md if you would like to see a template.
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