Explanation in Artificial Intelligence: Insights from the Social
  Sciences
  There has been a recent resurgence in the area of explainable artificial
intelligence as researchers and practitioners seek to make their algorithms
more understandable. Much of this research is focused on explicitly explaining
decisions or actions to a human observer, and it should not be controversial to
say that looking at how humans explain to each other can serve as a useful
starting point for explanation in artificial intelligence. However, it is fair
to say that most work in explainable artificial intelligence uses only the
researchers' intuition of what constitutes a `good' explanation. There exists
vast and valuable bodies of research in philosophy, psychology, and cognitive
science of how people define, generate, select, evaluate, and present
explanations, which argues that people employ certain cognitive biases and
social expectations towards the explanation process. This paper argues that the
field of explainable artificial intelligence should build on this existing
research, and reviews relevant papers from philosophy, cognitive
psychology/science, and social psychology, which study these topics. It draws
out some important findings, and discusses ways that these can be infused with
work on explainable artificial intelligence.
