Don't Trust Artificial Intelligence? Time To Open The AI 'Black Box'

Despite its promise, the growing field of Artificial Intelligence (AI) is experiencing a variety of growing pains. In addition to the problem of bias I discussed in a previous article, there is also the'black box' problem: if people don't know how AI comes up with its decisions, they won't trust it. In fact, this lack of trust was at the heart of many failures of one of the best-known AI efforts: IBM Watson – in particular, Watson for Oncology. Experts were quick to single out the problem. "IBM's attempt to promote its supercomputer programme to cancer doctors (Watson for Oncology) was a PR disaster," says Vyacheslav Polonski, Ph.D., UX researcher for Google and founder of Avantgarde Analytics.