# Beyond Expertise and Roles: A Framework to Characterize the Stakeholders of Interpretable Machine Learning and their Needs

arXiv: https://arxiv.org/abs/2101.09824 · HTML: https://mlsanity.com/paper/2101.09824/

## Key facts

- Cited by 64 papers in the map (data through 14 Oct 2026).
- Builds on 46 of its 163 references that are in the map.
- First posted on arXiv 24 Jan 2021.

## Builds on (most cited first, 30 of 46)

- [Visualizing and Understanding Convolutional Networks](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1311.2901/) (2013)
- [Towards A Rigorous Science of Interpretable Machine Learning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1702.08608/) (2017)
- [Interpretability Beyond Feature Attribution: Quantitative Testing with Concept Activation Vectors (TCAV)](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1711.11279/) (2017)
- [Explanation in Artificial Intelligence: Insights from the Social Sciences](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1706.07269/) (2017)
- [Counterfactual Explanations without Opening the Black Box: Automated Decisions and the GDPR](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1711.00399/) (2017)
- [Model Cards for Model Reporting](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1810.03993/) (2018)
- [This Looks Like That: Deep Learning for Interpretable Image Recognition](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1806.10574/) (2018)
- [The Mythos of Model Interpretability](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1606.03490/) (2016)
- [Interpretable Explanations of Black Boxes by Meaningful Perturbation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1704.03296/) (2017)
- [Explaining Explanations: An Overview of Interpretability of Machine Learning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1806.00069/) (2018)
- [Does the Whole Exceed its Parts? The Effect of AI Explanations on Complementary Team Performance](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2006.14779/) (2020)
- [Closing the AI Accountability Gap: Defining an End-to-End Framework for Internal Algorithmic Auditing](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2001.00973/) (2020)
- [Actionable Recourse in Linear Classification](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1809.06514/) (2018)
- [Counterfactual Visual Explanations](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1904.07451/) (2019)
- [Effect of Confidence and Explanation on Accuracy and Trust Calibration in AI-Assisted Decision Making](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2001.02114/) (2020)
- [Manipulating and Measuring Model Interpretability](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1802.07810/) (2018)
- [Opportunities and Challenges in Explainable Artificial Intelligence (XAI): A Survey](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2006.11371/) (2020)
- [Questioning the AI: Informing Design Practices for Explainable AI User Experiences](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2001.02478/) (2020)
- [Techniques for Interpretable Machine Learning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1808.00033/) (2018)
- [Model-Agnostic Interpretability of Machine Learning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1606.05386/) (2016)
- [Explainable Machine Learning in Deployment](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1909.06342/) (2019)
- [The What-If Tool: Interactive Probing of Machine Learning Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1907.04135/) (2019)
- [Human-Centered Artificial Intelligence: Reliable, Safe & Trustworthy](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2002.04087/) (2020)
- [Explainable Machine Learning for Scientific Insights and Discoveries](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1905.08883/) (2019)
- [Interpretable Convolutional Neural Networks](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1710.00935/) (2017)
- [On Human Predictions with Explanations and Predictions of Machine Learning Models: A Case Study on Deception Detection](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1811.07901/) (2018)
- [Proxy Tasks and Subjective Measures Can Be Misleading in Evaluating Explainable AI Systems](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2001.08298/) (2020)
- [What Clinicians Want: Contextualizing Explainable Machine Learning for Clinical End Use](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1905.05134/) (2019)
- [Visual Analytics in Deep Learning: An Interrogative Survey for the Next Frontiers](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1801.06889/) (2018)
- ["How do I fool you?": Manipulating User Trust via Misleading Black Box Explanations](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1911.06473/) (2019)

## Built on by (most cited first, 30 of 64)

- [Data Cards: Purposeful and Transparent Dataset Documentation for Responsible AI](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2204.01075/) (2022)
- [Human-Centered Explainable AI (XAI): From Algorithms to User Experiences](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2110.10790/) (2021)
- [AI Transparency in the Age of LLMs: A Human-Centered Research Roadmap](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2306.01941/) (2023)
- [Towards a Science of Human-AI Decision Making: A Survey of Empirical Studies](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2112.11471/) (2021)
- [Understanding the Role of Human Intuition on Reliance in Human-AI Decision-Making with Explanations](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2301.07255/) (2023)
- [Who Should I Trust: AI or Myself? Leveraging Human and AI Correctness Likelihood to Promote Appropriate Trust in AI-Assisted Decision-Making](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2301.05809/) (2023)
- [Assessing the Fairness of AI Systems: AI Practitioners' Processes, Challenges, and Needs for Support](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2112.05675/) (2021)
- ["Help Me Help the AI": Understanding How Explainability Can Support Human-AI Interaction](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2210.03735/) (2022)
- [Rethinking Model Evaluation as Narrowing the Socio-Technical Gap](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2306.03100/) (2023)
- [Fairness via Explanation Quality: Evaluating Disparities in the Quality of Post hoc Explanations](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2205.07277/) (2022)
- [Connecting Algorithmic Research and Usage Contexts: A Perspective of Contextualized Evaluation for Explainable AI](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2206.10847/) (2022)
- [Explainable Medical Imaging AI Needs Human-Centered Design: Guidelines and Evidence from a Systematic Review](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2112.12596/) (2021)
- [Selective Explanations: Leveraging Human Input to Align Explainable AI](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2301.09656/) (2023)
- [Machine Learning Security in Industry: A Quantitative Survey](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2207.05164/) (2022)
- [Seamful XAI: Operationalizing Seamful Design in Explainable AI](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2211.06753/) (2022)
- [Designerly Understanding: Information Needs for Model Transparency to Support Design Ideation for AI-Powered User Experience](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2302.10395/) (2023)
- [Telling Stories from Computational Notebooks: AI-Assisted Presentation Slides Creation for Presenting Data Science Work](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2203.11085/) (2022)
- [Towards a multi-stakeholder value-based assessment framework for algorithmic systems](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2205.04525/) (2022)
- [Saliency Cards: A Framework to Characterize and Compare Saliency Methods](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2206.02958/) (2022)
- [How to choose an Explainability Method? Towards a Methodical Implementation of XAI in Practice](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2107.04427/) (2021)
- [GAM Coach: Towards Interactive and User-centered Algorithmic Recourse](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2302.14165/) (2023)
- [Knowledge Graphs in Practice: Characterizing their Users, Challenges, and Visualization Opportunities](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2304.01311/) (2023)
- [On Evaluating Explanation Utility for Human-AI Decision Making in NLP](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2407.03545/) (2024)
- [Can AI Model the Complexities of Human Moral Decision-Making? A Qualitative Study of Kidney Allocation Decisions](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2503.00940/) (2025)
- [Explaining with Contrastive Phrasal Highlighting: A Case Study in Assisting Humans to Detect Translation Differences](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2312.01582/) (2023)
- [What will it take to generate fairness-preserving explanations?](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2106.13346/) (2021)
- [Abstraction Alignment: Comparing Model-Learned and Human-Encoded Conceptual Relationships](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2407.12543/) (2024)
- [Minimum Levels of Interpretability for Artificial Moral Agents](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2307.00660/) (2023)
- [May I Ask a Follow-up Question? Understanding the Benefits of Conversations in Neural Network Explainability](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2309.13965/) (2023)
- [How Human-Centered Explainable AI Interface Are Designed and Evaluated: A Systematic Survey](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2403.14496/) (2024)

## Abstract (arXiv)

To ensure accountability and mitigate harm, it is critical that diverse stakeholders can interrogate black-box automated systems and find information that is understandable, relevant, and useful to them. In this paper, we eschew prior expertise- and role-based categorizations of interpretability stakeholders in favor of a more granular framework that decouples stakeholders' knowledge from their interpretability needs. We characterize stakeholders by their formal, instrumental, and personal knowledge and how it manifests in the contexts of machine learning, the data domain, and the general milieu. We additionally distill a hierarchical typology of stakeholder needs that distinguishes higher-level domain goals from lower-level interpretability tasks. In assessing the descriptive, evaluative, and generative powers of our framework, we find our more nuanced treatment of stakeholders reveals gaps and opportunities in the interpretability literature, adds precision to the design and comparison of user studies, and facilitates a more reflexive approach to conducting this research.