A little of that human touch: achieving human-centric explainable AI via argumentation

Abstract

As data-driven AI models achieve unprecedented feats across previously unthinkable tasks, the di- minishing levels of interpretability of their increas- ingly complex architectures can often be sidelined in place of performance. If we are to compre- hend and trust these AI models as they advance, it is clear that symbolic methods, given their unpar- alleled strengths in knowledge representation and reasoning, can play an important role in explaining AI models. In this paper, I discuss some of the ways in which one branch of such methods, computa- tional argumentation, given its human-like nature, can be used to tackle this problem. I first outline a general paradigm for this area of explainable AI, before detailing a prominent methodology therein which we have pioneered. I then illustrate how this approach has been put into practice with diverse AI models and types of explanations, before looking ahead to challenges, future work and the outlook in this field.