Towards Transparent AI: A Survey on Explainable Large Language Models

Fuente: arXiv
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Auteurs principaux: Palikhe, Avash, Yu, Zhenyu, Wang, Zichong, Zhang, Wenbin
Format: Preprint
Publié: 2025
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author Palikhe, Avash
Yu, Zhenyu
Wang, Zichong
Zhang, Wenbin
author_facet Palikhe, Avash
Yu, Zhenyu
Wang, Zichong
Zhang, Wenbin
contents Large Language Models (LLMs) have played a pivotal role in advancing Artificial Intelligence (AI). However, despite their achievements, LLMs often struggle to explain their decision-making processes, making them a 'black box' and presenting a substantial challenge to explainability. This lack of transparency poses a significant obstacle to the adoption of LLMs in high-stakes domain applications, where interpretability is particularly essential. To overcome these limitations, researchers have developed various explainable artificial intelligence (XAI) methods that provide human-interpretable explanations for LLMs. However, a systematic understanding of these methods remains limited. To address this gap, this survey provides a comprehensive review of explainability techniques by categorizing XAI methods based on the underlying transformer architectures of LLMs: encoder-only, decoder-only, and encoder-decoder models. Then these techniques are examined in terms of their evaluation for assessing explainability, and the survey further explores how these explanations are leveraged in practical applications. Finally, it discusses available resources, ongoing research challenges, and future directions, aiming to guide continued efforts toward developing transparent and responsible LLMs.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2506_21812
institution arXiv
publishDate 2025
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle Towards Transparent AI: A Survey on Explainable Large Language Models
Palikhe, Avash
Yu, Zhenyu
Wang, Zichong
Zhang, Wenbin
Computation and Language
Computer Vision and Pattern Recognition
Large Language Models (LLMs) have played a pivotal role in advancing Artificial Intelligence (AI). However, despite their achievements, LLMs often struggle to explain their decision-making processes, making them a 'black box' and presenting a substantial challenge to explainability. This lack of transparency poses a significant obstacle to the adoption of LLMs in high-stakes domain applications, where interpretability is particularly essential. To overcome these limitations, researchers have developed various explainable artificial intelligence (XAI) methods that provide human-interpretable explanations for LLMs. However, a systematic understanding of these methods remains limited. To address this gap, this survey provides a comprehensive review of explainability techniques by categorizing XAI methods based on the underlying transformer architectures of LLMs: encoder-only, decoder-only, and encoder-decoder models. Then these techniques are examined in terms of their evaluation for assessing explainability, and the survey further explores how these explanations are leveraged in practical applications. Finally, it discusses available resources, ongoing research challenges, and future directions, aiming to guide continued efforts toward developing transparent and responsible LLMs.
title Towards Transparent AI: A Survey on Explainable Large Language Models
topic Computation and Language
Computer Vision and Pattern Recognition
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2506.21812