TExSS: Transparency and Explanations in Smart Systems

Abstract

Smart systems that apply complex reasoning to make decisions and plan behavior, such as decision support systems and personalized recommendations, are difficult for users to understand. Algorithms allow the exploitation of rich and varied data sources, in order to support human decision-making and/or taking direct actions; however, there are increasing concerns surrounding their transparency and accountability, as these processes are typically opaque to the user. Transparency and accountability have attracted increasing interest to provide more effective system training, better reliability and improved usability. This workshop provides a venue for exploring issues that arise in designing, developing and evaluating intelligent user interfaces that provide system transparency or explanations of their behavior. In addition, we focus on approaches to mitigate algorithmic biases that can be applied by researchers, even without access to a given system’s inter-workings, such as awareness, data provenance, and validation.