Google’s new ‘Explainable AI” (xAI) service

Google has started offering a new service for “explainable AI” or XAI, as it is fashionably called. Presently offered tools are modest, but the intent is in the right direction.

AI has an explainability problem

Artificial intelligence is set to transform global productivity, working patterns, and lifestyles and create enormous wealth.

Research firm Gartner expects the global AI economy to increase from about $1.2 trillion last year to about $3.9 Trillion by 2022, while McKinsey sees it delivering global economic activity of around $13 trillion by 2030.

AI techniques, especially Deep Learning (DL) models are revolutionizing the business and technology world with jaw-dropping performances in one application area after another — image classification, object detection, object tracking, pose recognition, video analytics, synthetic picture generation — just to name a few.

They are being used in — healthcare, I.T. services, finance, manufacturing, autonomous driving, video game playing, scientific discovery, and even the criminal justice system.