Evolutionary Computation and Explainable AI: A Roadmap to Understandable Intelligent Systems

arXiv (Cornell University)

Abstract

Artificial intelligence methods are being increasingly applied across various domains, but their often opaque nature has raised concerns about accountability and trust. In response, the field of explainable AI (XAI) has emerged to address the need for human-understandable AI systems. Evolutionary computation (EC), a family of powerful optimization and learning algorithms, offers significant potential to contribute to XAI, and vice versa. This paper provides an introduction to XAI and reviews current techniques for explaining machine learning models. We then explore how EC can be leveraged in XAI and examine existing XAI approaches that incorporate EC techniques. Furthermore, we discuss the application of XAI principles within EC itself, investigating how these principles can illuminate the behavior and outcomes of EC algorithms, their (automatic) configuration, and the underlying problem landscapes they optimize. Finally, we discuss open challenges in XAI and highlight opportunities for future research at the intersection of XAI and EC. Our goal is to demonstrate EC's suitability for addressing current explainability challenges and to encourage further exploration of these methods, ultimately contributing to the development of more understandable and trustworthy ML models and EC algorithms.

Authors 10

1. Ryan Zhou
2. Jaume Bacardit

   Newcastle University

   Affiliation as printed

   Newcastle University

3. Alexander E. I. Brownlee

   University of Stirling

   Affiliation as printed

   University of Stirling

4. Stefano Cagnoni

   University of Parma

   Affiliation as printed

   University of Parma

5. Martin Fyvie
   Affiliation as printed

   University

6. Giovanni Iacca

   University of Trento

   Affiliation as printed

   University of Trento

7. John McCall
   Affiliation as printed

   University

8. Bas van Stein Aachen

   Leiden University

   Affiliation as printed

   Universiteit Leiden

9. David J. Walker

   University of Exeter

   Affiliation as printed

   University of Exeter

10. Ting Hu

    Queen's University · Queens University

    Affiliation as printed

    Queen's University