In this paper we investigate the explainability of transformer models and their plausibility for hate speech and counter speech detection. We compare representatives of four different explainability approaches, i.e., gradient-based, perturbation-based, attention-based, and prototype-based approaches, and analyze them quantitatively with an ablation study and qualitatively in a user study. Results show that perturbation-based explainability performs best, followed by gradient-based and attention-based explainability. Prototypebased experiments did not yield useful results. Overall, we observe that explainability strongly supports the users in better understanding the model predictions.

Artificial Intelligence (AI) models have reached a very significant level of accuracy. While their superior performance offers considerable benefits, their inherent complexity often decreases human trust, which slows their application in high-risk decision-making domains, such as finance. The field of eXplainable AI (XAI) seeks to bridge this gap, aiming to make AI models more understandable. This survey, focusing on published work from the past five years, categorizes XAI approaches that predict financial time series. In this paper, explainability and interpretability are distinguished, emphasizing the need to treat these concepts separately as they are not applied the same way in practice. Through clear definitions, a rigorous taxonomy of XAI approaches, a complementary characterization, and examples of XAI's application in the finance industry, this paper provides a comprehensive view of XAI's current role in finance. It can also serve as a guide for selecting the most appropriate XAI approach for future applications.

Industry 5.0, which focuses on human and Artificial Intelligence (AI) collaboration for performing different tasks in manufacturing, involves a higher number of robots, Internet of Things (IoTs) devices and interconnections, Augmented/Virtual Reality (AR), and other smart devices. The huge involvement of these devices and interconnection in various critical areas, such as economy, health, education and defense systems, poses several types of potential security flaws. AI itself has been proven a very effective and powerful tool in different areas of cybersecurity, such as intrusion detection, malware detection, and phishing detection, among others. Just as in many application areas, cybersecurity professionals were reluctant to accept black-box ML solutions for cybersecurity applications. This reluctance pushed forward the adoption of eXplainable Artificial Intelligence (XAI) as a tool that helps explain how decisions are made in ML-based systems. In this survey, we present a comprehensive study of different XAI-based intrusion detection systems for industry 5.0, and we also examine the impact of explainability and interpretability on Cybersecurity practices through the lens of Adversarial XIDS (Adv-XIDS) approaches. Furthermore, we analyze the possible opportunities and challenges in XAI cybersecurity systems for industry 5.0 that elicit future research toward XAI-based solutions to be adopted by high-stakes industry 5.0 applications. We believe this rigorous analysis will establish a foundational framework for subsequent research endeavors within the specified domain.

Identifying the relevant input features that have a critical influence on the output results is indispensable for the development of explainable artificial intelligence (XAI). Remove-and-Retrain (ROAR) is a widely accepted approach for assessing the importance of individual pixels by measuring changes in accuracy following their removal and subsequent retraining of the modified dataset. However, we uncover notable limitations in pixel-perturbation strategies. When viewed from a geometric perspective, we discover that these metrics fail to discriminate between differences among feature attribution methods, thereby compromising the reliability of the evaluation. To address this challenge, we introduce an alternative feature-perturbation approach named Geometric Remove-and-Retrain (GOAR). Through a series of experiments with both synthetic and real datasets, we substantiate that GOAR transcends the limitations of pixel-centric metrics.

We introduce a novel metric for measuring semantic continuity in Explainable AI methods and machine learning models. We posit that for models to be truly interpretable and trustworthy, similar inputs should yield similar explanations, reflecting a consistent semantic understanding. By leveraging XAI techniques, we assess semantic continuity in the task of image recognition. We conduct experiments to observe how incremental changes in input affect the explanations provided by different XAI methods. Through this approach, we aim to evaluate the models' capability to generalize and abstract semantic concepts accurately and to evaluate different XAI methods in correctly capturing the model behaviour. This paper contributes to the broader discourse on AI interpretability by proposing a quantitative measure for semantic continuity for XAI methods, offering insights into the models' and explainers' internal reasoning processes, and promoting more reliable and transparent AI systems.

With the increasing impact of algorithmic decision-making on human lives, the interpretability of models has become a critical issue in machine learning. Counterfactual explanation is an important method in the field of interpretable machine learning, which can not only help users understand why machine learning models make specific decisions, but also help users understand how to change these decisions. Naturally, it is an important task to study the robustness of counterfactual explanation generation algorithms to model changes. Previous literature has proposed the concept of Naturally-Occurring Model Change, which has given us a deeper understanding of robustness to model change. In this paper, we first further generalize the concept of Naturally-Occurring Model Change, proposing a more general concept of model parameter changes, Generally-Occurring Model Change, which has a wider range of applicability. We also prove the corresponding probabilistic guarantees. In addition, we consider a more specific problem, data set perturbation, and give relevant theoretical results by combining optimization theory.

Numerous fairness metrics have been proposed and employed by artificial intelligence (AI) experts to quantitatively measure bias and define fairness in AI models. Recognizing the need to accommodate stakeholders' diverse fairness understandings, efforts are underway to solicit their input. However, conveying AI fairness metrics to stakeholders without AI expertise, capturing their personal preferences, and seeking a collective consensus remain challenging and underexplored. To bridge this gap, we propose a new framework, EARN Fairness, which facilitates collective metric decisions among stakeholders without requiring AI expertise. The framework features an adaptable interactive system and a stakeholder-centered EARN Fairness process to Explain fairness metrics, Ask stakeholders' personal metric preferences, Review metrics collectively, and Negotiate a consensus on metric selection. To gather empirical results, we applied the framework to a credit rating scenario and conducted a user study involving 18 decision subjects without AI knowledge. We identify their personal metric preferences and their acceptable level of unfairness in individual sessions. Subsequently, we uncovered how they reached metric consensus in team sessions. Our work shows that the EARN Fairness framework enables stakeholders to express personal preferences and reach consensus, providing practical guidance for implementing human-centered AI fairness in high-risk contexts. Through this approach, we aim to harmonize fairness expectations of diverse stakeholders, fostering more equitable and inclusive AI fairness.

Recent advancements in deep learning have significantly improved visual quality inspection and predictive maintenance within industrial settings. However, deploying these technologies on low-resource edge devices poses substantial challenges due to their high computational demands and the inherent complexity of Explainable AI (XAI) methods. This paper addresses these challenges by introducing a novel XAI-integrated Visual Quality Inspection framework that optimizes the deployment of semantic segmentation models on low-resource edge devices. Our framework incorporates XAI and the Large Vision Language Model to deliver human-centered interpretability through visual and textual explanations to end-users. This is crucial for end-user trust and model interpretability. We outline a comprehensive methodology consisting of six fundamental modules: base model fine-tuning, XAI-based explanation generation, evaluation of XAI approaches, XAI-guided data augmentation, development of an edge-compatible model, and the generation of understandable visual and textual explanations. Through XAI-guided data augmentation, the enhanced model incorporating domain expert knowledge with visual and textual explanations is successfully deployed on mobile devices to support end-users in real-world scenarios. Experimental results showcase the effectiveness of the proposed framework, with the mobile model achieving competitive accuracy while significantly reducing model size. This approach paves the way for the broader adoption of reliable and interpretable AI tools in critical industrial applications, where decisions must be both rapid and justifiable.

Explainable Artificial Intelligence (XAI) aims to improve the transparency of autonomous decision-making through explanations. Recent literature has emphasised users' need for holistic "multi-shot" explanations and the ability to personalise their engagement with XAI systems. We refer to this user-centred interaction as an XAI Experience. Despite advances in creating XAI experiences, evaluating them in a user-centred manner has remained challenging. To address this, we introduce the XAI Experience Quality (XEQ) Scale (pronounced "Seek" Scale), for evaluating the user-centred quality of XAI experiences. Furthermore, XEQ quantifies the quality of experiences across four evaluation dimensions: learning, utility, fulfilment and engagement. These contributions extend the state-of-the-art of XAI evaluation, moving beyond the one-dimensional metrics frequently developed to assess single-shot explanations. In this paper, we present the XEQ scale development and validation process, including content validation with XAI experts as well as discriminant and construct validation through a large-scale pilot study. Out pilot study results offer strong evidence that establishes the XEQ Scale as a comprehensive framework for evaluating user-centred XAI experiences.

The accuracy and understandability of bank failure prediction models are crucial. While interpretable models like logistic regression are favored for their explainability, complex models such as random forest, support vector machines, and deep learning offer higher predictive performance but lower explainability. These models, known as black boxes, make it difficult to derive actionable insights. To address this challenge, using counterfactual explanations is suggested. These explanations demonstrate how changes in input variables can alter the model output and suggest ways to mitigate bank failure risk. The key challenge lies in selecting the most effective method for generating useful counterfactuals, which should demonstrate validity, proximity, sparsity, and plausibility. The paper evaluates several counterfactual generation methods: WhatIf, Multi Objective, and Nearest Instance Counterfactual Explanation, and also explores resampling methods like undersampling, oversampling, SMOTE, and the cost sensitive approach to address data imbalance in bank failure prediction in the US. The results indicate that the Nearest Instance Counterfactual Explanation method yields higher quality counterfactual explanations, mainly using the cost sensitive approach. Overall, the Multi Objective Counterfactual and Nearest Instance Counterfactual Explanation methods outperform others regarding validity, proximity, and sparsity metrics, with the cost sensitive approach providing the most desirable counterfactual explanations. These findings highlight the variability in the performance of counterfactual generation methods across different balancing strategies and machine learning models, offering valuable strategies to enhance the utility of black box bank failure prediction models.