As artificial intelligence and machine learning (AI/ML) models become integral to network operations, their lack of transparency poses a significant barrier to operator trust. Existing explainable artificial intelligence (XAI) techniques often fail to bridge this gap for non-specialists, producing technical outputs that are difficult to translate into actionable insights.
arXiv:2607. 29614v1 Announce Type: cross Abstract: The rapid adoption of deep learning models in high-risk domains has intensified the need for trustworthy Explainable Artificial Intelligence (XAI).
By Christian Oliva, Luis F. Lago-Fern\'andez
arXiv:2607. 18068v1 Announce Type: cross Abstract: Large language models (LLMs) are increasingly adopted for network automation, yet their output quality and inference cost can vary substantially across LLM families.
By Kiarash Rezaei, Omran Ayoub, Paolo Monti, Carlos Natalino
arXiv:2607. 14315v1 Announce Type: cross Abstract: In this paper, we present a comprehensive framework for assessing the explainability of various XAI methods, such as LIME and SHAP, across multiple datasets and machine learning models, with the ultimate goal of creating a unified multidimensional explainability score.
By Georgios Makridis, Georgios Fatouros, Athanasios Kiourtis, Dimitrios Kotios, Vasileios Koukos, Dimosthenis Kyriazis, Jonh Soldatos
Large language models (LLMs) are increasingly adopted for network automation, yet their output quality and inference cost can vary substantially across LLM families. We present HuGLEN, a stepwise evaluation pipeline that uses an LLM-as-a-judge together with a small set of expert ratings to enable scalable and reproducible comparison of candidate LLMs, and to rank them using a quality efficiency score (QES).
XAI-Arena proposes using large language models (LLMs) as judges to evaluate the quality of explainable AI (XAI) explanations, aiming for reproducibility, scalability, and multidimensional assessment. The framework assesses dimensions such as simplicity, clarity, task adequacy, trust calibration, actionability, transparency, faithfulness, and overall interpretability across different datasets, models, and stakeholder personas. Human validation shows a strong positive correlation between LLM-generated and human ratings (Spearman's rho = .693, p < .001), supporting the viability of LLM-based evaluations.
By Yanfei Hu Fleischhauer, Alona Zharova, Nadja Klein, Stefan Feuerriegel
arXiv:2607. 14970v1 Announce Type: new Abstract: Automated optimisation is increasingly adopted in industrial processes, yet a trust gap persists between engineers who design these algorithms and operators who must act on their recommendations.
By Paul Darm, Cem Alpturk, Kenneth Ulrich, William Duncan, Ali Anwar, Annalisa Riccardi
arXiv:2605. 27618v2 Announce Type: replace Abstract: Despite the wide use of explainability techniques to attempt to understand the behavior of Artificial Intelligence (AI), the generated explanations may not always be reliable.
By Tom\'as Pereira, Jo\~ao Vitorino, Eva Maia, Isabel Pra\c{c}a
arXiv:2608. 10766v1 Announce Type: new Abstract: Explainable Artificial Intelligence (XAI) seeks to explain how an Artificial Intelligence (AI) system arrived at a particular decision.
By Kaivalya Rawal, Daria Onitiu, Brent Mittelstadt, Sandra Wachter, Chris Russell
The paper introduces a synthetic ground‑truth framework for evaluating explainable AI (XAI) methods, addressing the lack of reliable evaluation procedures. By using controlled interventions to create datasets where the importance of input components is known, the framework generates ground‑truth explanations that align with the model’s actual decision process. The authors apply this approach to binary images, tabular data, and time series, and find that nine popular XAI methods exhibit significant limitations, underscoring the need for intervention‑based benchmarks.
By Miquel Mir\'o-Nicolau, Francesco Spinnato, Riccardo Guidotti
arXiv:2607. 20675v1 Announce Type: new Abstract: Machine learning (ML) models are increasingly integrated into optical network automation frameworks to support tasks such as failure management, performance monitoring and resource allocation.
By Omran Ayoub, Carlos Natalino, Ali Al Housseini, Felix Foschum, Philipp Morger, Tiziano Leidi, David Hock, Paolo Monti
The paper discusses how Large Language Models can produce natural language self‑explanations that appear plausible but may not accurately reflect the model’s reasoning. It critiques current evaluation methods for such explanations and offers practical guidelines to assess their plausibility and faithfulness. Additionally, it argues that evaluation should also consider the actionability of these explanations, showing how they can aid decision‑making for various stakeholders.
By Elize Herrewijnen, Benedetta Muscato, Gizem Gezici, Fosca Giannotti