Information that matters: Exploring information needs of people affected by algorithmic decisions

Every AI system that makes decisions about people has a group of stakeholders that are personally affected by these decisions. However, explanations of AI systems rarely address the information needs of this stakeholder group, who often are AI novices. This creates a gap between conveyed information and information that matters to those who are impacted by the system’s decisions, such as domain experts and decision subjects. To address this, we present the “XAI Novice Question Bank”, an extension of the XAI Question Bank (Liao et al., 2020) containing a catalog of information needs from AI novices in two use cases: employment prediction and health monitoring. The catalog covers the categories of data, system context, system usage, and system specifications. We gathered information needs through task based interviews where participants asked questions about two AI systems to decide on their adoption and received verbal explanations in response. Our analysis showed that participants’ confidence increased after receiving explanations but that their understanding faced challenges. These included difficulties in locating information and in assessing their own understanding, as well as attempts to outsource understanding. Additionally, participants’ prior perceptions of the systems’ risks and benefits influenced their information needs. Participants who perceived high risks sought explanations about the intentions behind a system’s deployment, while those who perceived low risks rather asked about the system’s operation. Our work aims to support the inclusion of AI novices in explainability efforts by highlighting their information needs, aims, and challenges. We summarize our findings as five key implications that can inform the design of future explanations for lay stakeholder audiences. • People affected by algorithmic systems should be better considered in explainable AI. • Their interests lie in a system’s context and usage rather than in technical details. • Explanations must meet their information needs in order to support their agency. • Leveraging cognitive processes could improve the understandability of explanations. • Affected people’s perceptions of risks and benefits impact their information needs.