Notice: This page requires JavaScript to function properly.
Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings or update your browser.
Impara Limitations and Trade-offs | Explainability in Practice and Ethics
Explainable AI (XAI) Basics

bookLimitations and Trade-offs

When building AI systems, you often need to balance three competing goals: accuracy, complexity, and explainability. Highly accurate models, such as deep neural networks, may achieve excellent predictive performance but are often complex and difficult to interpret. On the other hand, simpler models like decision trees or linear regression are much easier to explain but may not capture subtle patterns in the data as effectively. Choosing the right level of complexity often means accepting a trade-off: as you increase explainability, you may lose some accuracy; as you increase accuracy by using more complex models, you may reduce explainability. This trade-off is a central challenge in the practice of explainable AI.

Note
Definition

Fidelity of explanations refers to how accurately an explanation reflects the true reasoning or internal logic of the underlying model. High-fidelity explanations closely match the model’s actual decision process, while low-fidelity explanations may oversimplify or distort what the model is really doing.

Some common limitations you will encounter when working with explainable AI include:

  • Increased explainability can reduce model performance;
  • Simple explanations may fail to capture complex model behaviors;
  • Explanations can sometimes be misleading if they do not have high fidelity;
  • Not all audiences require or benefit from the same level of explanation;
  • Generating explanations for very large or highly nonlinear models can be computationally expensive.

Understanding these limitations helps you set realistic expectations when deploying explainable AI solutions and guides you in selecting the most appropriate approach for your specific context.

question mark

Which of the following is a typical trade-off when you increase the explainability of an AI model?

Select the correct answer

Tutto è chiaro?

Come possiamo migliorarlo?

Grazie per i tuoi commenti!

Sezione 3. Capitolo 2

Chieda ad AI

expand

Chieda ad AI

ChatGPT

Chieda pure quello che desidera o provi una delle domande suggerite per iniziare la nostra conversazione

Awesome!

Completion rate improved to 6.67

bookLimitations and Trade-offs

Scorri per mostrare il menu

When building AI systems, you often need to balance three competing goals: accuracy, complexity, and explainability. Highly accurate models, such as deep neural networks, may achieve excellent predictive performance but are often complex and difficult to interpret. On the other hand, simpler models like decision trees or linear regression are much easier to explain but may not capture subtle patterns in the data as effectively. Choosing the right level of complexity often means accepting a trade-off: as you increase explainability, you may lose some accuracy; as you increase accuracy by using more complex models, you may reduce explainability. This trade-off is a central challenge in the practice of explainable AI.

Note
Definition

Fidelity of explanations refers to how accurately an explanation reflects the true reasoning or internal logic of the underlying model. High-fidelity explanations closely match the model’s actual decision process, while low-fidelity explanations may oversimplify or distort what the model is really doing.

Some common limitations you will encounter when working with explainable AI include:

  • Increased explainability can reduce model performance;
  • Simple explanations may fail to capture complex model behaviors;
  • Explanations can sometimes be misleading if they do not have high fidelity;
  • Not all audiences require or benefit from the same level of explanation;
  • Generating explanations for very large or highly nonlinear models can be computationally expensive.

Understanding these limitations helps you set realistic expectations when deploying explainable AI solutions and guides you in selecting the most appropriate approach for your specific context.

question mark

Which of the following is a typical trade-off when you increase the explainability of an AI model?

Select the correct answer

Tutto è chiaro?

Come possiamo migliorarlo?

Grazie per i tuoi commenti!

Sezione 3. Capitolo 2
some-alt