Research Papers

In this work, CT-xCOV, an explainable framework for COVID-19 diagnosis using Deep Learning (DL) on CT-scans is developed. CT-xCOV adopts an end-to-end approach from lung segmentation to COVID-19 detection and explanations of the detection model's prediction. For lung segmentation, we used the well-known U-Net model. For COVID-19 detection, we compared three different CNN architectures: a standard CNN, ResNet50, and DenseNet121. After the detection, visual and textual explanations are provided. For visual explanations, we applied three different XAI techniques, namely, Grad-Cam, Integrated Gradient (IG), and LIME. Textual explanations are added by computing the percentage of infection by lungs. To assess the performance of the used XAI techniques, we propose a ground-truth-based evaluation method, measuring the similarity between the visualization outputs and the ground-truth infections. The performed experiments show that the applied DL models achieved good results. The U-Net segmentation model achieved a high Dice coefficient (98%). The performance of our proposed classification model (standard CNN) was validated using 5-fold cross-validation (acc of 98.40% and f1-score 98.23%). Lastly, the results of the comparison of XAI techniques show that Grad-Cam gives the best explanations compared to LIME and IG, by achieving a Dice coefficient of 55%, on COVID-19 positive scans, compared to 29% and 24% obtained by IG and LIME respectively. The code and the dataset used in this paper are available in the GitHub repository [1].

Liver diseases pose a significant global health burden, impacting many individuals and having substantial economic and social consequences. Rising liver problems are considered a fatal disease in many countries, such as Egypt and Moldova. This study aims to develop a diagnosis and treatment model for liver disease using Basic Formal Ontology (BFO), Patient Clinical Data (PCD) ontology, and detection rules derived from a decision tree algorithm. For the development of the ontology, the National Viral Hepatitis Control Program (NVHCP) guidelines were used, which made the ontology more accurate and reliable. The Apache Jena framework uses batch processing to detect events based on these rules. Based on the event detected, queries can be directly processed using SPARQL. We convert these Decision Tree (DT) and medical guidelines-based rules into Semantic Web Rule Language (SWRL) to operationalize the ontology. Using this SWRL in the ontology to predict different types of liver disease with the help of the Pellet and Drools inference engines in Protege Tools, a total of 615 records were taken from different liver diseases. After inferring the rules, the result can be generated for the patient according to the rules, and other patient-related details, along with different precautionary suggestions, can be obtained based on these results. These rules can make suggestions more accurate with the help of Explainable Artificial Intelligence (XAI) with open API-based suggestions. When the patient has prescribed a medical test, the model accommodates this result using optical character recognition (OCR), and the same process applies when the patient has prescribed a further medical suggestion according to the test report. These models combine to form a comprehensive Decision Support System (DSS) for the diagnosis of liver disease.

Text classification aims to effectively categorize documents into pre-defined categories. Traditional methods for text classification often rely on large amounts of manually annotated training data, making the process time-consuming and labor-intensive. To address this issue, recent studies have focused on weakly-supervised and extremely weakly-supervised settings, which require minimal or no human annotation, respectively. In previous methods of weakly supervised text classification, pseudo-training data is generated by assigning pseudo-labels to documents based on their alignment (e.g., keyword matching) with specific classes. However, these methods ignore the importance of incorporating the explanations of the generated pseudo-labels, or saliency of individual words, as additional guidance during the text classification training process. To address this limitation, we propose XAI-CLASS, a novel explanation-enhanced extremely weakly-supervised text classification method that incorporates word saliency prediction as an auxiliary task. XAI-CLASS begins by employing a multi-round question-answering process to generate pseudo-training data that promotes the mutual enhancement of class labels and corresponding explanation word generation. This pseudo-training data is then used to train a multi-task framework that simultaneously learns both text classification and word saliency prediction. Extensive experiments on several weakly-supervised text classification datasets show that XAI-CLASS outperforms other weakly-supervised text classification methods significantly. Moreover, experiments demonstrate that XAI-CLASS enhances both model performance and explainability.

Artificial Intelligence (AI) has made its way into various scientific fields, providing astonishing improvements over existing algorithms for a wide variety of tasks. In recent years, there have been severe concerns over the trustworthiness of AI technologies. The scientific community has focused on the development of trustworthy AI algorithms. However, machine and deep learning algorithms, popular in the AI community today, depend heavily on the data used during their development. These learning algorithms identify patterns in the data, learning the behavioral objective. Any flaws in the data have the potential to translate directly into algorithms. In this study, we discuss the importance of Responsible Machine Learning Datasets and propose a framework to evaluate the datasets through a responsible rubric. While existing work focuses on the post-hoc evaluation of algorithms for their trustworthiness, we provide a framework that considers the data component separately to understand its role in the algorithm. We discuss responsible datasets through the lens of fairness, privacy, and regulatory compliance and provide recommendations for constructing future datasets. After surveying over 100 datasets, we use 60 datasets for analysis and demonstrate that none of these datasets is immune to issues of fairness, privacy preservation, and regulatory compliance. We provide modifications to the ``datasheets for datasets" with important additions for improved dataset documentation. With governments around the world regularizing data protection laws, the method for the creation of datasets in the scientific community requires revision. We believe this study is timely and relevant in today's era of AI.

Transparent Anomaly Detection via Concept-based Explanations

Laya Rafiee Sevyeri, Ivaxi Sheth, Farhood Farahnak +2

Advancements in deep learning techniques have given a boost to the performance of anomaly detection. However, real-world and safety-critical applications demand a level of transparency and reasoning beyond accuracy. The task of anomaly detection (AD) focuses on finding whether a given sample follows the learned distribution. Existing methods lack the ability to reason with clear explanations for their outcomes. Hence to overcome this challenge, we propose Transparent {A}nomaly Detection {C}oncept {E}xplanations (ACE). ACE is able to provide human interpretable explanations in the form of concepts along with anomaly prediction. To the best of our knowledge, this is the first paper that proposes interpretable by-design anomaly detection. In addition to promoting transparency in AD, it allows for effective human-model interaction. Our proposed model shows either higher or comparable results to black-box uninterpretable models. We validate the performance of ACE across three realistic datasets - bird classification on CUB-200-2011, challenging histopathology slide image classification on TIL-WSI-TCGA, and gender classification on CelebA. We further demonstrate that our concept learning paradigm can be seamlessly integrated with other classification-based AD methods.

Ensuring a neural network is not relying on protected attributes (e.g., race, sex, age) for predictions is crucial in advancing fair and trustworthy AI. While several promising methods for removing attribute bias in neural networks have been proposed, their limitations remain under-explored. In this work, we mathematically and empirically reveal an important limitation of attribute bias removal methods in presence of strong bias. Specifically, we derive a general non-vacuous information-theoretical upper bound on the performance of any attribute bias removal method in terms of the bias strength. We provide extensive experiments on synthetic, image, and census datasets to verify the theoretical bound and its consequences in practice. Our findings show that existing attribute bias removal methods are effective only when the inherent bias in the dataset is relatively weak, thus cautioning against the use of these methods in smaller datasets where strong attribute bias can occur, and advocating the need for methods that can overcome this limitation.

Refutation of Shapley Values for XAI -- Additional Evidence

Xuanxiang Huang, Joao Marques-Silva

Recent work demonstrated the inadequacy of Shapley values for explainable artificial intelligence (XAI). Although to disprove a theory a single counterexample suffices, a possible criticism of earlier work is that the focus was solely on Boolean classifiers. To address such possible criticism, this paper demonstrates the inadequacy of Shapley values for families of classifiers where features are not boolean, but also for families of classifiers for which multiple classes can be picked. Furthermore, the paper shows that the features changed in any minimal $l_0$ distance adversarial examples do not include irrelevant features, thus offering further arguments regarding the inadequacy of Shapley values for XAI.

With large chess-playing neural network models like AlphaZero contesting the state of the art within the world of computerised chess, two challenges present themselves: The question of how to explain the domain knowledge internalised by such models, and the problem that such models are not made openly available. This work presents the re-implementation of the concept detection methodology applied to AlphaZero in McGrath et al. (2022), by using large, open-source chess models with comparable performance. We obtain results similar to those achieved on AlphaZero, while relying solely on open-source resources. We also present a novel explainable AI (XAI) method, which is guaranteed to highlight exhaustively and exclusively the information used by the explained model. This method generates visual explanations tailored to domains characterised by discrete input spaces, as is the case for chess. Our presented method has the desirable property of controlling the information flow between any input vector and the given model, which in turn provides strict guarantees regarding what information is used by the trained model during inference. We demonstrate the viability of our method by applying it to standard 8x8 chess, using large open-source chess models.

Explainable Artificial Intelligence (XAI) has received widespread interest in recent years, and two of the most popular types of explanations are feature attributions, and counterfactual explanations. These classes of approaches have been largely studied independently and the few attempts at reconciling them have been primarily empirical. This work establishes a clear theoretical connection between game-theoretic feature attributions, focusing on but not limited to SHAP, and counterfactuals explanations. After motivating operative changes to Shapley values based feature attributions and counterfactual explanations, we prove that, under conditions, they are in fact equivalent. We then extend the equivalency result to game-theoretic solution concepts beyond Shapley values. Moreover, through the analysis of the conditions of such equivalence, we shed light on the limitations of naively using counterfactual explanations to provide feature importances. Experiments on three datasets quantitatively show the difference in explanations at every stage of the connection between the two approaches and corroborate the theoretical findings.

This paper follows calls for critical approaches to computing and conceptualisations of intersectional, feminist, decolonial HCI and AI design and asks what a feminist intersectional perspective in HCXAI research and design might look like. Sketching out initial research directions and implications for explainable AI design, it suggests that explainability from a feminist perspective would include the fostering of response-ability - the capacity to critically evaluate and respond to AI systems - and would centre marginalised perspectives.

A Conceptual Algorithm for Applying Ethical Principles of AI to Medical Practice

Debesh Jha, Gorkem Durak, Vanshali Sharma +12

Artificial Intelligence (AI) is poised to transform healthcare delivery through revolutionary advances in clinical decision support and diagnostic capabilities. While human expertise remains foundational to medical practice, AI-powered tools are increasingly matching or exceeding specialist-level performance across multiple domains, paving the way for a new era of democratized healthcare access. These systems promise to reduce disparities in care delivery across demographic, racial, and socioeconomic boundaries by providing high-quality diagnostic support at scale. As a result, advanced healthcare services can be affordable to all populations, irrespective of demographics, race, or socioeconomic background. The democratization of such AI tools can reduce the cost of care, optimize resource allocation, and improve the quality of care. In contrast to humans, AI can potentially uncover complex relationships in the data from a large set of inputs and lead to new evidence-based knowledge in medicine. However, integrating AI into healthcare raises several ethical and philosophical concerns, such as bias, transparency, autonomy, responsibility, and accountability. In this study, we examine recent advances in AI-enabled medical image analysis, current regulatory frameworks, and emerging best practices for clinical integration. We analyze both technical and ethical challenges inherent in deploying AI systems across healthcare institutions, with particular attention to data privacy, algorithmic fairness, and system transparency. Furthermore, we propose practical solutions to address key challenges, including data scarcity, racial bias in training datasets, limited model interpretability, and systematic algorithmic biases. Finally, we outline a conceptual algorithm for responsible AI implementations and identify promising future research and development directions.

The AI Act proposal: a new right to technical interpretability?

Chiara Gallese

The debate about the concept of the so called right to explanation in AI is the subject of a wealth of literature. It has focused, in the legal scholarship, on art. 22 GDPR and, in the technical scholarship, on techniques that help explain the output of a certain model (XAI). The purpose of this work is to investigate if the new provisions introduced by the proposal for a Regulation laying down harmonised rules on artificial intelligence (AI Act), in combination with Convention 108 plus and GDPR, are enough to indicate the existence of a right to technical explainability in the EU legal framework and, if not, whether the EU should include it in its current legislation. This is a preliminary work submitted to the online event organised by the Information Society Law Center and it will be later developed into a full paper.