Why Interpretability Matters

  • Engineer insight: Gives practitioners signals and traces to understand what drove an output.
  • Faster debugging: Helps detect shortcuts, spurious correlations, and bugs before users are affected.
  • Better controls: Supports targeted fixes, safer rollbacks, and evidence for technical review.
  • Support for explanations: Provides faithful internals that user-facing explanations can rely on.

When Interpretability Is Missed

Twitter’s automatic image-cropping tool decided which part of a photo to preview in timelines. Users noticed that the crop sometimes centered on lighter-skinned faces over darker-skinned faces and other biased outcomes. After internal analysis and a public bias bounty confirmed the issue, Twitter removed the tool. Limited interpretability hid the problem until outside scrutiny made the behavior visible.

Interpretability Inter-Driver Relationship List

The following table summarizes the 14 interpretability related, inter-driver relationships. The full 105 relationships can be viewed here:

Note: The convention when displaying drivers Ds vs. Dt, is to display the first driver alphabetically as Ds.

Drivers Relationship Explanation Example
Inter-Pillar Relationships
Pillar: Operational Integrity
Governance vs. Interpretability Reinforcing Governance supports interpretability by enforcing standards to ensure AI systems are understandable and transparent (Bullock et al., 2024 ) AI regulations mandate interpretability to validate algorithmic outputs, ensuring systems comply with governance frameworks (Bullock et al., 2024 )
Interpretability vs. Robustness Tensioned Interpretability can compromise robustness due to increased complexity in models (Hamon et al., 2020 ) Interpretable models in safety-critical applications may reduce robustness, increasing vulnerability to adversarial attacks (Hamon et al., 2020 )
Explainability vs. Interpretability Reinforcing Explainability aids interpretability by clarifying complex model outputs for user understanding (Hamon et al., 2020 ) In financial AI, explainable models improve decision insight, ensuring model actionability (Hamon et al., 2020 )
Interpretability vs. Security Tensioned Security demands limited openness; interpretability requires transparency, creating inherent conflict (Bommasani et al., 2021 ) Interpretable models in healthcare might expose vulnerabilities if too transparent, affecting security (Rudin, 2019 )
Interpretability vs. Safety Reinforcing Interpretability aids safety by enhancing understandability and identifying system flaws (Leslie, 2019 ) In medical AI, interpretable models allow doctors to verify predictions, improving safety (Leslie, 2019 )
Cross-Pillar Relationships
Pillar: Ethical Safeguards vs. Operational Integrity
Fairness vs. Interpretability Reinforcing Interpretability fosters fairness by making opaque AI systems comprehensible, allowing equitable scrutiny and accountability (Binns, 2018 ) Interpretable algorithms in credit scoring identify biases, supporting fairness standards and promoting equitable lending (Bateni et al., 2022 )
Inclusiveness vs. Interpretability Reinforcing Interpretability enriches inclusiveness by ensuring AI systems are understandable, fostering wide accessibility and equitable application (Shams et al., 2023 ) Interpretable AI frameworks enable diverse communities’ meaningful engagement by clarifying system decisions, supporting inclusive practices (Cheong, 2024 )
Bias Mitigation vs. Interpretability Reinforcing Interpretability aids bias detection, supporting equitable AI systems by elucidating model decisions (Ferrara, 2024 ) Interpretable healthcare models reveal biases in diagnostic outputs, promoting fair treatment (Ferrara, 2024 )
Accountability vs. Interpretability Reinforcing Accountability and interpretability enhance transparency and trust, essential for effective AI system governance (Dubber et al., 2020 ) In finance, regulators use interpretable AI to ensure banks’ accountability by tracking decisions (Ananny & Crawford, 2018 )
Interpretability vs. Privacy Tensioned Privacy constraints often limit model transparency, complicating interpretability (Cheong, 2024 ) In healthcare, strict privacy laws can impede clear interpretability, affecting decisions on patient data (Wachter & Mittelstadt, 2019 )
Pillar: Operational Integrity vs. Societal Empowerment
Interpretability vs. Sustainability Neutral Interpretability and sustainability operate independently, focusing on different AI aspects (van Wynsberghe, 2021 ) An AI model could be interpretable but unsustainable due to high computational demands (van Wynsberghe, 2021 )
Human Oversight vs. Interpretability Reinforcing Human oversight bolsters interpretability by guiding transparency in AI processes, ensuring systems remain clear to users (Hamon et al., 2020 ) Interpretable algorithms in medical AI gain user trust through human-supervised transparency during their development (Doshi-Velez & Kim, 2017 )
Interpretability vs. Transparency Reinforcing Interpretability enhances transparency by providing insights into AI mechanisms, fortifying user understanding (Lipton, 2016 ) Transparent models boost public trust, as stakeholders understand how AI decisions are made clearly (Lipton, 2016 )
Interpretability vs. Trustworthiness Reinforcing Interpretability boosts trustworthiness by enhancing users’ understanding, encouraging confidence in AI systems (Rudin, 2019 ) Understanding AI predictions in healthcare improves trust in medical diagnostics (Rudin, 2019 )