Travis Greene

Travis Greene, Amit Dhurandhar, Galit Shmueli

In response to growing recognition of the social impact of new AI-based technologies, major AI and ML conferences and journals now encourage or require papers to include ethics impact statements and undergo ethics reviews. This move has sparked heated debate concerning the role of ethics in AI research, at times devolving into name-calling and threats of "cancellation." We diagnose this conflict as one between atomist and holist ideologies. Among other things, atomists believe facts are and should be kept separate from values, while holists believe facts and values are and should be inextricable from one another. With the goal of reducing disciplinary polarization, we draw on numerous philosophical and historical sources to describe each ideology's core beliefs and assumptions. Finally, we call on atomists and holists within the ever-expanding data science community to exhibit greater empathy during ethical disagreements and propose four targeted strategies to ensure AI research benefits society.

David Martens, Galit Shmueli, Theodoros Evgeniou et al.

Understanding the decisions made and actions taken by increasingly complex AI system remains a key challenge. This has led to an expanding field of research in explainable artificial intelligence (XAI), highlighting the potential of explanations to enhance trust, support adoption, and meet regulatory standards. However, the question of what constitutes a "good" explanation is dependent on the goals, stakeholders, and context. At a high level, psychological insights such as the concept of mental model alignment can offer guidance, but success in practice is challenging due to social and technical factors. As a result of this ill-defined nature of the problem, explanations can be of poor quality (e.g. unfaithful, irrelevant, or incoherent), potentially leading to substantial risks. Instead of fostering trust and safety, poorly designed explanations can actually cause harm, including wrong decisions, privacy violations, manipulation, and even reduced AI adoption. Therefore, we caution stakeholders to beware of explanations of AI: while they can be vital, they are not automatically a remedy for transparency or responsible AI adoption, and their misuse or limitations can exacerbate harm. Attention to these caveats can help guide future research to improve the quality and impact of AI explanations.