What is Explainable AI – Tools | Benefits | Example

Written By The IoT Academy
Published on November 6th, 2024
Updated on November 5, 2024

Artificial intelligence (AI) is changing industries quickly by improving decision-making, automating tasks, and boosting productivity. However, as AI becomes a bigger part of our lives, we face a challenge: understanding how these systems make decisions. This is where Explainable AI (XAI) comes in. XAI makes sure that AI systems are clear, easy to understand as well as accountable. Which helps people trust and check the results. In this blog, we will discuss what it is, the tools used for it, its benefits, and real-world examples. We will also look at the difference between explainable Artificial Intelligence and Generative AI. Also, answer some common questions to help explain the importance of understanding AI systems today.

Table of Contents

What is Explainable AI?

XAI is a type of artificial intelligence that helps people understand how and why AI systems make decisions. In traditional AI, especially with complex models like deep learning. It can be hard to see how the AI reached its conclusions. XAI solves this problem by providing clear explanations, making it easier for people to trust and interpret the AI’s actions. The goal of explainable AI is to make AI more transparent, helping users, developers, as well as stakeholders. To see if AI decisions are fair and in line with ethical standards. This builds trust and accountability in AI systems.

Examples of Explainable AI

To understand how XAI works in practice, so let’s explore some real-world examples:

Healthcare – Medical Diagnosis: AI aids doctors in diagnosing diseases like cancer at earlier stages. In healthcare, transparency is crucial—Explainable AI (XAI) enables doctors to understand how AI reaches its conclusions, building trust and facilitating its use in patient care. For example, IBM Watson Health uses AI to assist oncologists by analyzing medical data and suggesting treatment plans. XAI helps doctors trust and act on these suggestions.
Finance – Credit Scoring: AI is used in finance for things like credit scoring, fraud detection, and approving loans. It helps financial institutions make sure these decisions are fair and transparent, and follow regulations like GDPR. For instance, Zest AI provides credit scoring models. That shows why a loan was approved or denied, making the process more transparent and fair.
Autonomous Vehicles: Self-driving cars rely on AI for object detection and real-time decision-making while driving. Explainable AI enables engineers and regulators to understand the car’s critical decisions, ensuring safe and reliable operation.
Legal Systems – Judicial Decision Making: AI is being used in legal systems to predict case outcomes and recommend sentences. Also, for analyzing legal documents. XAI ensures that legal professionals can trust the AI’s decisions. As well as understand the reasoning behind them, reducing the chance of errors or bias in the justice system.

Key Characteristics of Explainable AI

AI explainability refers to AI systems that clearly explain how they make decisions. However, some key points include:

Transparency: The AI system also shows how it works and makes decisions.
Interpretability: People can easily understand why the AI made a certain decision.
Accountability: The AI’s actions can be checked, making it easier to find and fix mistakes.

Explainable AI Tools

Several tools help make AI easier to understand and explain. These tools help researchers, developers, and businesses see how their AI models work and make sure they are fair and ethical.

LIME (Local Interpretable Model-agnostic Explanations): LIME is a popular explainable AI tool that explains individual predictions by simplifying complex models like deep learning or random forests. It helps show how specific decisions are made.
SHAP (S-Hapley Additive exPlanations): SHAP uses game theory to assign each part of the model a value for its contribution to the final decision. It is used to explain complex models and works well for understanding both overall and individual predictions.
Google’s What-If Tool: This explainable artificial intelligence tool lets users see how changes in input data affect AI predictions. As well as it has a visual interface to help check if the AI is making fair decisions or showing bias.
IBM’s AI Fairness 360: This explainable AI toolkit helps check if AI models are fair by using different algorithms to detect bias. It also helps developers ensure their models make fair decisions.
Microsoft InterpretML: This tool helps developers explain their AI models. It uses methods like LIME and SHAP to provide explanations for different types of models. Which makes it easier to understand how predictions are made.
H2O.ai Driverless AI: This platform automates machine learning and includes tools like LIME and SHAP to create easy-to-understand AI results. So, the people can see how the model makes decisions.

Explainable AI Benefits

The benefits of using XAI are many and apply to different fields like healthcare, finance, and law. So, here are some key advantages:

Trust and Transparency: When AI can explain how it works, it builds trust between the AI system and its users. In important areas like healthcare and finance, people need to trust AI before using it widely. Transparent AI is more likely to be trusted and used.
Ethics and Fairness: AI can sometimes show bias based on the data it was trained on. explainable AI helps find and fix these biases. By making sure the decisions are fair and ethical.
Regulatory Compliance: Governments are creating stricter rules about AI accountability. Many require AI to be understandable and transparent. It helps follow these rules by making decisions easy to understand.
Debugging and Improving Models: When developers can see how AI makes decisions, they can find mistakes, fix them, and improve the system. This leads to better results and fewer problems.
Better User Experience: By explaining its decisions, AI can improve user satisfaction. For example, in a recommendation system, explaining why a certain recommendation is made can make users more engaged and happy with the results.

What is the Difference Between Explainable AI and Gen AI?

While both XAI and Gen AI are subfields of artificial intelligence, they serve very different purposes. Here is an easy breakdown of the differences between XAI and Gen AI (Gen AI):

Explainable AI (XAI)

Focus: Making AI decisions clear and understandable.
Goal: To help humans understand AI decisions, ensuring fairness, ethics, and accountability.
Applications: Used in healthcare, finance, self-driving cars, and legal systems.

Generative AI (Gen AI)

Focus: Creating new content or data from existing information.
Goal: To generate creative outputs like text, images, music, or designs.
Applications: Generally, used for content creation (like ChatGPT and DALL-E), virtual reality, and design.

Also Read: Difference Between Google Bard vs ChatGPT – Which is Better

In short, explainable AI algorithms help us understand how AI makes decisions. While Generative AI focuses on what AI can create. As well as it ensures that AI is transparent and ethical, while Generative AI focuses on creativity.

Conclusion

In conclusion, in today’s AI-driven world, transparency and accountability are crucial. explainable AI helps by making complex AI systems easier to understand and trust. Many tools allow businesses to ensure their AI models are ethical and responsible. As AI evolves, the difference between XAII and Generative AI becomes clearer. However, generative AI focuses on creating content, while XAI makes sure AI decisions are clear and trustworthy. Last of all, XAI is key to building fair, ethical, and responsible AI systems that benefit everyone.

Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs)

Q. Is ChatGPT Explainable AI?

Ans. No, ChatGPT is not considered an explainable AI. It is a powerful tool for generating text, but it works like a black box. This means the way it creates responses is complex and unclear.

Q. Do we need Explainable AI?

Ans. Yes, Explainable AI is very important. It helps ensure that AI systems are trustworthy, fair, and ethical. Without clear explanations, AI might make biased or wrong decisions. Which can have serious effects, especially in fields like healthcare, finance, and law. Explainable AI allows people to understand and check AI decisions before using them widely.

About The Author:

The IoT Academy

The IoT Academy as a reputed ed-tech training institute is imparting online / Offline training in emerging technologies such as Data Science, Machine Learning, IoT, Deep Learning, and more. We believe in making revolutionary attempt in changing the course of making online education accessible and dynamic.