Directive Explanations for Actionable Explainability in Machine Learning Applications

In this article, we show that explanations of decisions made by machine learning systems can be improved by not only explaining why a decision was made but also explaining how an individual could obtain their desired outcome. We formally define the concept of directive explanations (those that offer specific actions an individual could take to achieve their desired outcome), introduce two forms of directive explanations (directive-specific and directive-generic), and describe how these can be generated computationally. We investigate people's preference for and perception toward directive explanations through two online studies, one quantitative and the other qualitative, each covering two domains (the credit scoring domain and the employee satisfaction domain). We find a significant preference for both forms of directive explanations compared to non-directive counterfactual explanations. However, we also find that preferences are affected by many aspects, including individual preferences and social factors. We conclude that deciding what type of explanation to provide requires information about the recipients and other contextual information. This reinforces the need for a human-centered and context-specific approach to explainable AI.