Why Businesses Need Explainable AI

Artificial intelligence (AI), has become a large part of all our lives, whether we realise it or not. With this increasing reliance on technology and automation, it’s normal that people would feel wary about how AI can impact them and their job.

To combat the feeling of dissatisfaction with artificial intelligence, explainable AI has become a necessity for any company that’s looking to keep ahead when it comes to technology and keep their whole team on board through periods of change.

What is AI explainability?

The problem with AI at the moment is that not many people trust it. Your employees may be worried that AI is going to take their job or alter their everyday lives.

AI explainability is the solution to this distrust as it’s all about putting in place processes and methods that make it easier for everyone to adopt and understand new AI technology.

With AI explainability, you can make it easier for your workforce to understand what can sometimes be an extremely complex system. The use of technology, especially considering how important it is to the day-to-day running of a business, should be something that everyone on your team is on board with for it to be a success.

By putting processes in place to bring teams together and educate them on the benefits of technology, you can build a lot of trust and confidence. 

How to encourage your employees to adopt AI

Many employees will instinctively distrust AI when it is first implemented into their work, but that initial feeling can be avoided when the business chooses to explain and instruct them how to work alongside technology – and prove to them that it’s not going to steal their job.

To make your AI adoption a success, you should be able to explain the following points to your team:

• • What is AI explainability: what processes and tools are you putting in place, how will AI change their job role, how will they be expected to interact with the AI, etc.

• Why their data will be used: no one wants to feel like they’re giving away their data without consent. Explain what data you need, where it will be stored and why you need it.

• How their data will be used: explain what you plan to do with their data, how it will be used, and whether any other third parties will be involved with the usage of their data.

• The benefits AI brings: most importantly, you need to prove to people that AI is ultimately a good thing that will make everyone’s lives easier. If you’re able to explain this, adoption rates for new technology will be much higher within your business.

Why do businesses need explainable AI?

Artificial intelligence is a phenomenon that can completely alter the way that a business makes decisions and manages its employees.

Many businesses are starting to incorporate artificial intelligence and technology into their operations, which has involved developing some basic tools to get the most out of these powerful platforms.

However, if businesses really want to ensure that their new technological strategies will be a success, they need to have a good explainability strategy in place to communicate their goals and visions with the wider workforce.

According to research, the companies that are seeing the biggest bottom-line returns from their use of AI are more likely to have implemented some sort of explainable AI to complement the new programmes.

Ultimately, when you foster a culture of trust and innovation within your company – which can be achieved by proper implementation of explainable AI – you are more likely to see annual revenue grow. For some businesses they have seen annual revenue grow by 10%, mainly through the adoption of explainable AI practices.

Potential challenges with explainable Ai

Although explainable AI is ultimately good for the forward trajectory of your business, it doesn’t come without its own set of challenges.

There are many different AI applications out there and, as explainability grows in importance, it is also becoming a lot harder to achieve.

Explaining complex AI platforms like deep learning and neural networks can be extremely hard for most workforces to understand. They may be beneficial to your business in the long run, but if your employees don’t know this you may find it impossible to successfully implement these platforms in your workplace.

The solution to explainable AI and why it’s so important to businesses is not just about explaining to your employees in simple terms what AI is and how it will be used. It’s more important that your business makes a genuine effort to create tools and processes that will help employees to understand AI at varying levels and be able to explain it to others.

By creating this circle of explainability, any business should be able to implement AI into their new technology strategy.