A Two-Dimensional Explanation Framework to Classify AI as Incomprehensible, Interpretable, or Understandable
Ruben S. Verhagen (TU Delft - Electrical Engineering, Mathematics and Computer Science)
Mark A. Neerincx (TU Delft - Electrical Engineering, Mathematics and Computer Science, TNO)
Myrthe L. Tielman (TU Delft - Electrical Engineering, Mathematics and Computer Science)
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Abstract
Because of recent and rapid developments in Artificial Intelligence (AI), humans and AI-systems increasingly work together in human-agent teams. However, in order to effectively leverage the capabilities of both, AI-systems need to be understandable to their human teammates. The branch of eXplainable AI (XAI) aspires to make AI-systems more understandable to humans, potentially improving human-agent teamwork. Unfortunately, XAI literature suffers from a lack of agreement regarding the definitions of and relations between the four key XAI-concepts: transparency, interpretability, explainability, and understandability. Inspired by both XAI and social sciences literature, we present a two-dimensional framework that defines and relates these concepts in a concise and coherent way, yielding a classification of three types of AI-systems: incomprehensible, interpretable, and understandable. We also discuss how the established relationships can be used to guide future research into XAI, and how the framework could be used during the development of AI-systems as part of human-AI teams.