Title: Explainable artificial intelligence: beware the inmates running the asylum (or How I learnt to stop worrying and love the social and behavioural sciences)
Abstract: In his seminal book The Inmates are Running the Asylum: Why High-Tech Products Drive Us Crazy And How To Restore The Sanity, Alan Cooper argues that a major reason why software is often poorly designed (from a user perspective) is that programmers are in charge. As a result, programmers design software that works for themselves, rather than for their target audience; a phenomenon he refers to as the ‘inmates running the asylum’. In this talk, I argue that explainable AI risks a similar fate if AI researchers and practitioners do not take a multi-disciplinary approach to explainable AI. I further assert that to do this, we must understand, adopt, implement, and improve models from the vast and valuable bodies of research in philosophy, psychology, and cognitive science; and focus evaluation on people instead of just technology. I paint a picture of what I think the future of explainable AI will look like if we went down this path.
Bio: Tim is an associate professor of computer science in the School of Computing and Information Systems at The University of Melbourne, and Co-Director for the Centre of AI and Digital Ethics. His primary area of expertise is in artificial intelligence, with particular emphasis on human-AI interaction and collaboration and Explainable Artificial Intelligence (XAI). His work is at the intersection of artificial intelligence, interaction design, and cognitive science/psychology