10-minute talk glenda hanibal and i did together at a faculty workshop about explainable AI.

1. Glenda Hannibal
Peter Purgathofer

2. XAI-related Research Interest
Trust
TransparencyExplainability

3. »Human«
»Society«
People Technology
form
shapes
frames
changes
capacitates
design
Homo
Digitalis

4. The Human Perspective
AI + Robots
…use language
…are human-like – anthropomorphism by design vs. projection
are experienced as agent-like – not an ontological question!
–› inclusion of this experience in design of XAI
–› rationality is not the default

5. Explanations of Robotic Systems
(de Graaf & Malle 2017: 19)
»Robots and virtual agents typically have numerous
features that trigger human inferences of intentional
agency«
»For those intentional agents, we hypothesize,
people will apply the same conceptual framework of
behavior explanation that they apply to humans; and
they will expect AIs to apply this framework as well.”
De Graaf, M. M., & Malle,
B. F. (2017, October).
How people explain
action (and autonomous
intelligent systems
should too). In 2017
AAAI Fall Symposium
Series.
1

6. Explanation statements
Definition: An explanation is a set of statements
that makes intelligible the existence or occurrence
of an object, event, or state of affairs.
Malle, B. F. (1999). How
people explain behavior:
A new theoretical
framework. Personality
and social psychology
review, 3(1), 23-48.
Explanations for (Malle 1999):
Physical reality (unintentional → causes)
Social reality (intentional → reasons)
2

7. Everyday situations
explanation v justification
rational reconstruction = common sense is post-hoc
counter-factual explanation (»why not…«, »what if…«)
»inference to the best explanation«
Explanations & Meaning3

8. »Social science research suggests an
explanation is best considered a
social process, a conversation between
explainer and explainee.«
»…argumentation-based dialogue […]
derived from modelling human
interaction.«
Weld & Bansal: The
Challenge of Crafting
Intelligible Intelligence,
CACM, 2019
Esklar & Azhar:
Explanation through
Argumentation, HAI,
2018
Explanations as Dialogue4

9. Constructive Approach
–› the complexity of human experience poses special
problems – wicked (design) problems – but that
can (and should) be benifitial for finding solutions