Beware of "Explanations" of AI

Fuente: arXiv
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Hauptverfasser: Martens, David, Shmueli, Galit, Evgeniou, Theodoros, Bauer, Kevin, Janiesch, Christian, Feuerriegel, Stefan, Gabel, Sebastian, Goethals, Sofie, Greene, Travis, Klein, Nadja, Kraus, Mathias, Kühl, Niklas, Perlich, Claudia, Verbeke, Wouter, Zharova, Alona, Zschech, Patrick, Provost, Foster
Format: Preprint
Veröffentlicht: 2025
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author Martens, David
Shmueli, Galit
Evgeniou, Theodoros
Bauer, Kevin
Janiesch, Christian
Feuerriegel, Stefan
Gabel, Sebastian
Goethals, Sofie
Greene, Travis
Klein, Nadja
Kraus, Mathias
Kühl, Niklas
Perlich, Claudia
Verbeke, Wouter
Zharova, Alona
Zschech, Patrick
Provost, Foster
author_facet Martens, David
Shmueli, Galit
Evgeniou, Theodoros
Bauer, Kevin
Janiesch, Christian
Feuerriegel, Stefan
Gabel, Sebastian
Goethals, Sofie
Greene, Travis
Klein, Nadja
Kraus, Mathias
Kühl, Niklas
Perlich, Claudia
Verbeke, Wouter
Zharova, Alona
Zschech, Patrick
Provost, Foster
contents Understanding the decisions made and actions taken by increasingly complex AI system remains a key challenge. This has led to an expanding field of research in explainable artificial intelligence (XAI), highlighting the potential of explanations to enhance trust, support adoption, and meet regulatory standards. However, the question of what constitutes a "good" explanation is dependent on the goals, stakeholders, and context. At a high level, psychological insights such as the concept of mental model alignment can offer guidance, but success in practice is challenging due to social and technical factors. As a result of this ill-defined nature of the problem, explanations can be of poor quality (e.g. unfaithful, irrelevant, or incoherent), potentially leading to substantial risks. Instead of fostering trust and safety, poorly designed explanations can actually cause harm, including wrong decisions, privacy violations, manipulation, and even reduced AI adoption. Therefore, we caution stakeholders to beware of explanations of AI: while they can be vital, they are not automatically a remedy for transparency or responsible AI adoption, and their misuse or limitations can exacerbate harm. Attention to these caveats can help guide future research to improve the quality and impact of AI explanations.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2504_06791
institution arXiv
publishDate 2025
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle Beware of "Explanations" of AI
Martens, David
Shmueli, Galit
Evgeniou, Theodoros
Bauer, Kevin
Janiesch, Christian
Feuerriegel, Stefan
Gabel, Sebastian
Goethals, Sofie
Greene, Travis
Klein, Nadja
Kraus, Mathias
Kühl, Niklas
Perlich, Claudia
Verbeke, Wouter
Zharova, Alona
Zschech, Patrick
Provost, Foster
Machine Learning
Understanding the decisions made and actions taken by increasingly complex AI system remains a key challenge. This has led to an expanding field of research in explainable artificial intelligence (XAI), highlighting the potential of explanations to enhance trust, support adoption, and meet regulatory standards. However, the question of what constitutes a "good" explanation is dependent on the goals, stakeholders, and context. At a high level, psychological insights such as the concept of mental model alignment can offer guidance, but success in practice is challenging due to social and technical factors. As a result of this ill-defined nature of the problem, explanations can be of poor quality (e.g. unfaithful, irrelevant, or incoherent), potentially leading to substantial risks. Instead of fostering trust and safety, poorly designed explanations can actually cause harm, including wrong decisions, privacy violations, manipulation, and even reduced AI adoption. Therefore, we caution stakeholders to beware of explanations of AI: while they can be vital, they are not automatically a remedy for transparency or responsible AI adoption, and their misuse or limitations can exacerbate harm. Attention to these caveats can help guide future research to improve the quality and impact of AI explanations.
title Beware of "Explanations" of AI
topic Machine Learning
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2504.06791