As technology advances, and AI becomes more common within business enterprises, the number of companies and industries that utilize the powerful insights AI and machine learning can provide is increasing quickly. While AI is undoubtedly benefiting companies, there is still a risk in blindly trusting the recommendations, insights, or predictions AI provides.
When we don’t fully comprehend how our AI is making decisions, we cannot optimize all AI has to offer. This leads to potential biases, errors, and costs caused by AI.
I know what you’re thinking… AI is extremely complex and opaque to the majority of humans. How are we supposed to understand it’s decision-making processes, insights, predictions, and more?
The answer is Explainable AI (XAI)!
WHAT IS XAI?
Just the term “artificial intelligence” on its own is intimidating to most, and now we are adding another word? Don’t worry, it is much more simple than it sounds. In fact, it’s “explainable.” (pun intended)
XAI is a new and emerging area attempting to focus on increasing the transparency of AI processes. The overall goal of XAI is to help humans understand, trust, and effectively manage the results of AI technology.
XAI’s main objective is to produce more explainable models while maintaining a high level of learning performance/prediction accuracy. XAI optimizes the use of AI in your environment through an in-depth model and data investigation of your current AI system(s). The results are what all industries and companies like to see: increased efficiency and decreased costs.
WHAT ARE THE BENEFITS OF XAI?
There are an abundance of benefits that come with the adoption of XAI. These benefits could help you and your company thrive, no matter which industry you operate in.
According to Philip Pilgerstorfer, a Data Scientist and XAI specialist for QuantumBlack, these are just a few key benefits of adopting XAI:
- Building user trust
- Satisfying legal requirements
- Providing ethics-related justification
- Deriving actionable and robust insights
With proven results, such as those mentioned above, many companies and industries are adopting XAI methodologies and strategies to help their company become more effective.
DO I NEED XAI IN MY INDUSTRY?
The number of industries and job functions that are benefiting from XAI are endless. So, I will list a few specific benefits for some of the main functions and industries that use XAI to optimize their AI systems.
Healthcare
Machine learning and AI technology are already used and implemented in the healthcare setting. However, doctors are unable to account for why certain decisions or predictions are being made. This imposes limitations on how and where AI technology can be applied.
With XAI, doctors are able to tell why a certain patient is at high risk for hospital admission and what treatment would be most suitable. This enables doctors to act based on better information.
Marketing
AI and machine learning continue to be an important part of companies’ marketing efforts—including the impressive opportunities to maximize marketing ROI through the business insights provided by them.
With such powerful information that helps guide marketing strategies, marketers must ask themselves “How can I trust the reasoning behind the AI’s recommendations for my marketing actions?”
With XAI, marketers are able to detect any weak spots in their AI models and mitigate them, thus getting more accurate results and insights that they can trust. This is possible as XAI provides them with a better understanding of expected marketing outcomes, the reasons behind the recommended marketing actions, and keys to improving efficiency with faster and more accurate marketing decisions and increasing their marketing ROI while decreasing potential costs.
Insurance
With the insurance industry having considerable impacts, insurers must trust, understand, and audit their AI systems to optimize their full potential.
XAI has proven to be a game-changer for many insurers. With it, insurers are seeing improved customer acquisition and quote conversion, increased productivity and efficiency, and decreased claims rates and fraudulent claims.
Financial Services
Financial institutions such as Capital One and Bank of America are actively leveraging AI technology. They look to provide their customers with financial stability, financial awareness, and financial management.
With XAI, financial services provide fair, unbiased, and explainable outcomes to their customers and service providers. It allows financial institutions to ensure compliance with different regulatory requirements while following ethical and fair standards.
Just a few ways XAI benefits the financial industry include improving market forecasting, ensuring credit scoring fairness, discovering factors associated with theft to reduce false positives, and decreasing potential costs caused by AI biases or errors.
CONCLUSION
XAI is a new and emerging methodology that helps humans better understand the outcomes and decisions their AI technology recommends. With the continuous increase and use of advanced technology, being able to adapt to these changes and understand them proves significant importance for companies. Many industries will need XAI to understand the insights, solutions, and predictions provided by AI and machine learning systems. The adoption and learning of XAI is more important now than ever.
