Statistical Perspectives on Reliability of Artificial Intelligence Systems
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Abstract (arXiv)
Artificial intelligence (AI) systems have become increasingly popular in many areas. Nevertheless, AI technologies are still in their developing stages, and many issues need to be addressed. Among those, the reliability of AI systems needs to be demonstrated so that the AI systems can be used with confidence by the general public. In this paper, we provide statistical perspectives on the reliability of AI systems. Different from other considerations, the reliability of AI systems focuses on the time dimension. That is, the system can perform its designed functionality for the intended period. We introduce a so-called SMART statistical framework for AI reliability research, which includes five components: Structure of the system, Metrics of reliability, Analysis of failure causes, Reliability assessment, and Test planning. We review traditional methods in reliability data analysis and software reliability, and discuss how those existing methods can be transformed for reliability modeling and assessment of AI systems. We also describe recent developments in modeling and analysis of AI reliability and outline statistical research challenges in this area, including out-of-distribution detection, the effect of the training set, adversarial attacks, model accuracy, and uncertainty quantification, and discuss how those topics can be related to AI reliability, with illustrative examples. Finally, we discuss data collection and test planning for AI reliability assessment and how to improve system designs for higher AI reliability. The paper closes with some concluding remarks.
Key facts. Cited by 10 papers in the map (data through 14 Oct 2026). Builds on 32 of its 110 references that are in the map. First posted on arXiv 9 Nov 2021.
Builds on
32 of 110 references.
References · 32
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20 more
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Citing papers per year: 2022: 1; 2023: 2; 2024: 4; 2025: 3.
10 papers.
- 2025StatLLM: A Dataset for Evaluating the Performance of Large Language Models in Statistical Analysiscited by 8
- 2024Trustworthy and Responsible AI for Human-Centric Autonomous Decision-Making Systemscited by 3
- 2023Planning Reliability Assurance Tests for Autonomous Vehiclescited by 2
- 2024ProAct: Progressive Training for Hybrid Clipped Activation Function to Enhance Resilience of DNNscited by 1
- 2024A Comprehensive Case Study on the Performance of Machine Learning Methods on the Classification of Solar Panel Electroluminescence Imagescited by 1
- 2024Contextualized AI for Cyber Defense: An Automated Survey using LLMscited by 1
- 2025Bridging the Data Gap in AI Reliability Research and Establishing DR-AIR, a Comprehensive Data Repository for AI Reliabilitycited by 1
- 2022Artificial Intelligence Nomenclature Identified From Delphi Study on Key Issues Related to Trust and Barriers to Adoption for Autonomous Systemscited by 0
- 2023Deep Neural Network Identification of Limnonectes Species and New Class Detection Using Image Datacited by 0
- 2025Detecting underdetermination in parameterized quantum circuitscited by 0
- 2025Detecting underdetermination in parameterized quantum circuits4 Apr 2025
- 2025StatLLM: A Dataset for Evaluating the Performance of Large Language Models in Statistical Analysis24 Feb 2025
- 2025Bridging the Data Gap in AI Reliability Research and Establishing DR-AIR, a Comprehensive Data Repository for AI Reliability17 Feb 2025
- 2024Contextualized AI for Cyber Defense: An Automated Survey using LLMs20 Sep 2024
- 2024Trustworthy and Responsible AI for Human-Centric Autonomous Decision-Making Systems28 Aug 2024
- 2024A Comprehensive Case Study on the Performance of Machine Learning Methods on the Classification of Solar Panel Electroluminescence Images12 Aug 2024
- 2024ProAct: Progressive Training for Hybrid Clipped Activation Function to Enhance Resilience of DNNs10 Jun 2024
- 2023Planning Reliability Assurance Tests for Autonomous Vehicles30 Nov 2023
- 2023Deep Neural Network Identification of Limnonectes Species and New Class Detection Using Image Data15 Nov 2023
- 2022Artificial Intelligence Nomenclature Identified From Delphi Study on Key Issues Related to Trust and Barriers to Adoption for Autonomous Systems14 Oct 2022