arXiv AI

A Survey of Explainable Reinforcement Learning: Targets, Methods and Needs

A survey paper titled "A Survey of Explainable Reinforcement Learning: Targets, Methods and Needs" reviews over 250 studies in the sub‑domain of eXplainable AI focused on reinforcement learning (XRL). The authors introduce a taxonomy based on the questions "What" (the target of explanation) and "How" (the method of explanation) and use it to organize the state‑of‑the‑art literature. They also highlight related domains that warrant further attention and outline key needs for advancing the field of XRL.

arXiv AI
Jul 17

Position: Explainability Research Must Prioritize Foundations over Ad-hoc Methods

arXiv:2607. 14123v1 Announce Type: cross Abstract: Despite the proliferation of Explainable AI (XAI) techniques -- from feature attributions to sparse autoencoders -- explanations rarely influence real-world workflows.

By Michal Moshkovitz, Suraj Srinivas, Lesia Semenova, Nave Frost, Cyrus Rashtchian, Valentyn Boreiko, Shichang Zhang, Himabindu Lakkaraju, Cynthia Rudin, Jennifer Wortman Vaughan
arXiv Machine Learning
Sep 23

xWhyL: Causal Interactive Learning

arXiv:2609.26037v1 Announce Type: new Abstract: Explanations are central to causal reasoning, and cognitive science has long established that the human drive to explain is itself a mechanism for lear...

By Nicholas Tagliapietra, Florian Peter Busch, Moritz Willig, Matej Ze\v{c}evi\'c, Lavdim Halilaj, Juergen Luettin, Kristian Kersting
arXiv Computation and Language
Sep 7

From Plausible to Actionable: A Position on LLM Self-Explanations

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
arXiv AI
Jul 17

Towards a Unified Multidimensional Explainability Metric: Evaluating Trustworthiness in AI Models

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
arXiv AI
Sep 28

A Synthetic Ground-Truth Framework for the Evaluation of Explainable AI Methods

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 AI
Sep 10

Explaining AI Agents Through Execution Traces

arXiv:2609.06063v1 Announce Type: new Abstract: AI Agents are increasingly deployed in real-world settings, where they interact with external tools and make sequential decisions with limited human ov...

By Vittoria Vineis, Fabiano Veglianti, Lorenzo Antonelli, Claudia Di Carlo, Matteo Silvestri, Gabriele Tolomei
arXiv AI
Oct 5

MEA: A Reward-Driven Multi-Agent System for Faithful Model Explanations

MEA is a multi‑agent framework that automates the selection and configuration of explanation tools for machine learning models across tabular, text, and vision data. A Proposer agent chooses appropriate tools based on the question and modality, while an Actor agent is trained end‑to‑end for faithfulness, producing natural‑language explanations. Experiments show that MEA outperforms existing post‑hoc explainers and closed‑source baselines, achieving significant faithfulness gains on six datasets.

By Yuyang Cheng, Raghav Kaushik Ravi, Srivarshinee Sridhar, Sriparna Saha, Akash Ghosh, Chirag Agarwal