AI Explainability: Bridging the Gap Between Complexity and Understanding

The history of AI goes back to myths and literature. However, from the first step taken by Alan Turing to the very recent ChatGPT, understanding AI has always been complex. Understanding AI didn’t feel like a requirement in the past. This is especially true when the concepts were only discussed in books and movies. However, today, AI technologies are already being used in multiple industries for different use cases.

This article aims to cover a very important and relevant topic in contemporary times, i.e., AI explainability. We will cover what it means, several techniques, and much more. So, let’s begin.

What is AI Explainability?

The concept of AI explainability or explainable AI refers to the ability to understand and interpret the decisions or outputs made by artificial intelligence (AI) systems. As AI technologies are becoming way more pervasive and complex, there is an imminent need for transparency and interpretability. This is to build trust, ensure accountability, and address ethical concerns.

Why do we need AI Explainability?

AI explainability is important for several reasons. Reasons that address transparency, accountability, trust, and ethical considerations. Let’s check some of the most common ones:

• Ensure greater acceptance and adoption of AI technologies in various domains
• Helps in understanding how AI models make decisions
• Uncover and address biases in AI models
• Identification of potential ethical issues, promoting fairness, and mitigating discrimination
• Accountability of AI systems
• Attribution of responsibility
• Transparency in the AI decision-making process
• Transparency in models helps in identifying errors or inaccuracies
• Quick detection of mistakes
• Continuous feedback and refinement in terms of accuracy and reliability
• Facilitating communication between AI systems and humans
• Explainability supports efforts to create fair and unbiased AI models
• Public perception of AI

In times when AI is taking over most critical applications in different sectors such as healthcare, finance, automobile, etc. Understanding AI is a lucrative need. It will not only impact how we operate but will directly impact effectiveness and efficiency. Additionally, with the hyper-adoption of AI, the implementers need to stay aligned with regulatory bodies and ethical guidelines.

Techniques Used for AI Explainability

Several techniques are used to enhance explainability in AI models. Here are some common techniques used:

Interpretable Models

These are simpler models that are inherently easier to understand. However, they sometimes sacrifice predictive performance. Some examples of these models are decision trees, linear models, rule-based systems, etc.

Ethical AI Auditing

This technique conducts audits to identify biases and ethical concerns related to AI models. With regular assessments, it is ensured that ethical standards and regulatory requirements are met.

Feature Importance Methods

This technique identifies and communicates relevant input features that influence model predictions. There are methods like permutation and information gain that help assess each feature.

Local Explanations

This one is used to provide insights. Insights like why a specific decision was made for a particular instance or prediction. Approaches like LIME (Local Interpretable Model-agnostic Explanations) help generate locally faithful explanations for the models.

Global Expansions

Global expansions provide a holistic view of the model's operation across various inputs and scenarios. Several methods, like Shapley values, integrated gradients, etc., provide global insights into feature contributions.

Partial Dependence Plots (PDP)

This technique illustrates the relationship between a feature and the model’s prediction. While doing so, it is important to ensure that all the other features remain constant. PDPs are great for visualizing the impact of individual features on the model’s output.

Counterfactual Explanations

In this, we generate instances that are similar to a given input. However, they have different model predictions. Counterfactuals provide insights into how minuscule changes in input variables affect the model’s decisions.

Layer-wise Relevance Propagation (LRP)

In layer-wise relevance propagation, we use attribute relevance scores to input features. This is based on the contribution of each feature at different layers of the neural network. LRP is a great technique for understanding the importance of different features throughout the model.

Attention Mechanisms

This one is commonly used for natural language processing. We highlight specific input parts crucial for the model’s decision in attention mechanisms. For instance, Transformer-based models often use attention mechanisms for language. For example, GPT-3, GPT-4, Google BERT, Dall-E, Hugging-Face’s Transformers, etc.

Model Distillation

This technique is used to train a simpler model. It is done by mimicking the behavior of a much more complex model. It is often easier to interpret a distilled model while retaining essential characteristics of the original model.

Explainable AI Libraries

This technique uses dedicated libraries and frameworks that provide tools for explaining AI models. Some examples are SHAP (SHapley Additive exPlanations), Lime, and Alibi Explain.

Visualizations

It is used to create visual representations of internal models or decision processes. This technique uses saliency maps, decision boundaries, etc., that help users understand the model’s behavior.

User-Friendly Interfaces

These are used to develop interfaces that provide clear explanations and understandability for non-experts. It includes dashboards and interactive tools that enhance user engagement with AI systems.

These techniques can be applied individually or in combination to enhance the explainability factor of AI models. These give users the required insights to trust, validate, and even understand decision-making.

Challenges associated with AI Explainability

While AI explainability is crucial to understanding complex models often useful for startups, entrepreneurs, etc., approaching the best AI development companies for outsourcing. It does pose significant challenges. Therefore, let’s check them out:

• Modern AI models can have millions and billions of parameters, making it incredibly difficult to arrive at specific decisions
• Modern systems are often called “Black Boxes” as their decision process is not visible to the users, making them hard to interpret
• Model complexity and explainability are often compromised because simpler models like decision trees are interpretable but don’t cover complex tasks
• AI is capable of learning biases based on the training data fed
• Explanations for AI models are not always accurate and don’t represent the decision-making process
• There is no universally accepted framework or standard for AI explainability
• End users are not equipped with technical acumen even for explained models
• As AI becomes more pervasive, meeting regulatory and ethical requirements without compromising the performance or practicality of AI systems is a complex challenge
• AI models are trained on specific data; however, they are expected to operate and provide explanations in environments unknown

AI Explainability - Ethical Considerations, Industry Standards, and Regulations

With so much skepticism around AI, AI explainability must address ethical concerns, adhere to industry standards, and comply with regulations. Here’s a closer at each of these aspects:

Ethical Considerations

• AI systems should be free from biases and should treat individuals or groups fairly
• There should be clarity as to who is responsible for the decisions that are made by the AI systems
• Users should be able to understand and trust AI systems
• AI systems should provide users with sufficient information to support user autonomy

Industry Standards

• ISO Standards: The International Organization for Standardization (ISO) and the International Electrotechnical Commission (IEC) already have standards to mitigate risks and maximize the rewards of using AI. However, these are primarily laid from the perspective of improving transparency and explainability.
• IEEE Standards: The Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) is another standard with multiple subdivisions. These subdivisions range from ethics and governance to technical standards.
• Sector-Specific Standards: Different industries have developed different standards for explainability based on their needs and associated risks. For example, IMAI is in healthcare, ACORD is in finance, SAE International is in automotive, etc.

Regulation

• GDPR (General Data Protection Regulation): GDPR is prevalent in the European Union. It includes provisions that are related to the explainability of AI decisions, especially in the context of automation decision-making and profiling
• Algorithmic Accountability Act: This legislation in the United States aims to make it mandatory for companies to conduct impact assessments of automated decision systems. This should be done to check biases, effectiveness, and other factors.
• Regulatory Bodies and Frameworks: Several countries and regions are actively developing regulatory frameworks for AI. For example, the European Union proposed the “Artificial Intelligence Act”.

Conclusion

The need for explainable AI rose from the increasing complexity of the models. Most stakeholders are required to understand the ethical and practical implications. It is to enable more transparency in decision-making and help understand the root causes of AI-associated problems. Symbiotically, this would benefit in terms of improving the existing models and understanding the system internally. AI explainability is the need of the hour as the future holds a lot of AI systems to be integrated into our current workflows.