Why explainable AI is indispensable to Zillow's business

Zillow, an online marketplace that facilitates the buying, selling, renting, financing, and remodeling of homes, employs lots of AI technologies to do things like estimate home prices. But the output of AI systems like these can be opaque, creating a "black box" problem where practitioners and customers can't audit the systems properly. Without transparency, serious problems like algorithmic bias can persist undetected, and trust in the models becomes impossible. For obvious ethical reasons, this is why explainable AI (XAI) is so crucial to the creation and deployment of AI systems, but pragmatically, it's also key to the success of AI-powered products and services from companies like Zillow. David Fagnan, director of applied science on the Zillow Offers team, discussed with VentureBeat how and why XAI is indispensable for the company.