Making AI Human Again: The importance of Explainable AI (XAI)

As the explosion of algorithms and Artificial Intelligence (AI) continues across business and society, we are already facing ethical, regulatory and business-critical issues around how we use the output from machine learning. The issue of who evaluates the decisions made by AI -- if anybody -- is becoming more urgent. "Programs are not products, they are processes… we will never be sure what a process does until we run it -- as occurred recently when Amazon's facial recognition software misidentified 28 members of Congress as criminal suspects." Of course, the history of technology is the story of augmenting human limitations with machinery or tools that enable us to do more than our bodies or minds let us. But are we on the verge of losing control of this vital process?