The five reasons why XAI solutions are more successful than an oracle based on AI, or any black box IT system, are as follows:
- Decision support systems that explain themselves have a higher return on investment because explanations close the feedback loop between strategy and operations resulting in timely adaption to changes, longer system lifetime and better integration with business values.
- Offering explanations enhances stakeholder trust because the decisions are credible for the customer and also makes the business accountable towards regulators
- Decisions with explanations become better decisions because the explanations show (unwanted) biases and help to include missing, common sense, knowledge.
- It is feasible to implement AI solutions that generate explanations without a huge drop in performance with the six-step method that I developed, and technology expected from increased research activity.
- To be prepared for the increased demand for transparency based on concerns about the ethics of AI and the effect on the fundamental principles of a democratic society.
Each chapter in the book: AIX: Artificial Intelligence needs explanation, will explain one of these reasons in detail and provide examples or practical guidance. After reading you will have a good understanding what it takes to explain solutions that support or automate a decision task and the value explanations add to your organization.
I have tried to stay away from technical details. When I describe how to implement XAI solutions, I make an exception to this self-imposed rule and introduce some details about the underlying technologies. Just enough for a good understanding, not enough to ‘do it yourself’. In the final chapter I recommend sources to use if you need help understanding the algorithms in more detail.