Explainable Artificial Intelligence: A Survey of Needs, Techniques, Applications, and Future Direction
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Abstract (arXiv)
Artificial intelligence models encounter significant challenges due to their black-box nature, particularly in safety-critical domains such as healthcare, finance, and autonomous vehicles. Explainable Artificial Intelligence (XAI) addresses these challenges by providing explanations for how these models make decisions and predictions, ensuring transparency, accountability, and fairness. Existing studies have examined the fundamental concepts of XAI, its general principles, and the scope of XAI techniques. However, there remains a gap in the literature as there are no comprehensive reviews that delve into the detailed mathematical representations, design methodologies of XAI models, and other associated aspects. This paper provides a comprehensive literature review encompassing common terminologies and definitions, the need for XAI, beneficiaries of XAI, a taxonomy of XAI methods, and the application of XAI methods in different application areas. The survey is aimed at XAI researchers, XAI practitioners, AI model developers, and XAI beneficiaries who are interested in enhancing the trustworthiness, transparency, accountability, and fairness of their AI models.
Key facts. Cited by 46 papers in the map (data through 7 Oct 2026). Builds on 101 of its 221 references that are in the map. First posted on arXiv 30 Aug 2024.
Builds on
101 of 221 references.
References · 101
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38 more
- 2016Concrete Problems in AI Safetycited by 1,582
- 2019Explainable Artificial Intelligence (XAI): Concepts, Taxonomies, Opportunities and Challenges toward Responsible AIcited by 1,543
- 2017Learning Important Features Through Propagating Activation Differencescited by 1,454
- 2017Towards A Rigorous Science of Interpretable Machine Learningcited by 1,400
- 2017Counterfactual Explanations without Opening the Black Box: Automated Decisions and the GDPRcited by 1,086
- 2014Striving for Simplicity: The All Convolutional Netcited by 983
- 2018A Survey Of Methods For Explaining Black Box Modelscited by 970
- 2019Attention is not Explanationcited by 916
- 2019Analyzing Multi-Head Self-Attention: Specialized Heads Do the Heavy Lifting, the Rest Can Be Prunedcited by 844
- 2020Quantifying Attention Flow in Transformerscited by 759
- 2023Measuring Faithfulness in Chain-of-Thought Reasoningcited by 668
- 2020Transformer Interpretability Beyond Attention Visualizationcited by 620
- 2023A Prompt Pattern Catalog to Enhance Prompt Engineering with ChatGPTcited by 612
- 2023NExT-GPT: Any-to-Any Multimodal LLMcited by 610
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- 2018Explaining Explanations: An Overview of Interpretability of Machine Learningcited by 508
- 2020Time Series Forecasting With Deep Learning: A Surveycited by 457
- 2019A Survey on Explainable Artificial Intelligence (XAI): Towards Medical XAIcited by 403
- 2023Larger language models do in-context learning differentlycited by 386
- 2016Time Series Classification from Scratch with Deep Neural Networks: A Strong Baselinecited by 358
- 2017Methods for Interpreting and Understanding Deep Neural Networkscited by 342
- 2021Generic Attention-model Explainability for Interpreting Bi-Modal and Encoder-Decoder Transformerscited by 316
- 2019Reinforcement Learning in Healthcare: A Surveycited by 308
- 2015WIDER FACE: A Face Detection Benchmarkcited by 297
- 2020A Survey on Neural Network Interpretabilitycited by 291
- 2020Effect of Confidence and Explanation on Accuracy and Trust Calibration in AI-Assisted Decision Makingcited by 281
- 2020Opportunities and Challenges in Explainable Artificial Intelligence (XAI): A Surveycited by 252
- 2015Explaining NonLinear Classification Decisions with Deep Taylor Decompositioncited by 248
- 2022Towards Understanding Chain-of-Thought Prompting: An Empirical Study of What Matterscited by 221
- 2016Model-Agnostic Interpretability of Machine Learningcited by 219
- 2018Deep Learning: A Critical Appraisalcited by 214
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- 2019Explainable Reinforcement Learning Through a Causal Lenscited by 177
- 2020Counterfactual Explanations and Algorithmic Recourses for Machine Learning: A Reviewcited by 174
- 2022Quantus: An Explainable AI Toolkit for Responsible Evaluation of Neural Network Explanations and Beyondcited by 171
- 2019Explainable Machine Learning for Scientific Insights and Discoveriescited by 165
- 2017Interpretable Convolutional Neural Networkscited by 161
- 2020Integrating Scientific Knowledge with Machine Learning for Engineering and Environmental Systemscited by 160
50 most cited of 101 All 101 (JSON)
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Citing papers per year: 2024: 5; 2025: 21; 2026: 20.
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- 2024Ethio-Fake: Cutting-Edge Approaches to Combat Fake News in Under-Resourced Languages Using Explainable AIcited by 8
- 2025Evaluating the Effectiveness of XAI Techniques for Encoder-Based Language Modelscited by 7
- 2025A Unified Framework with Novel Metrics for Evaluating the Effectiveness of XAI Techniques in LLMscited by 7
- 2025Explainable AI: XAI-Guided Context-Aware Data Augmentationcited by 5
- 2024Explainability of Point Cloud Neural Networks Using SMILE: Statistical Model-Agnostic Interpretability with Local Explanationscited by 4
- 2024Investigating the Effectiveness of Explainability Methods in Parkinson's Detection from Speechcited by 4
- 2025ShadowNPU: System and Algorithm Co-design for NPU-Centric On-Device LLM Inferencecited by 4
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- 2024Multi-SpaCE: Multi-Objective Subsequence-based Sparse Counterfactual Explanations for Multivariate Time Series Classificationcited by 3
- 2025PEDANTIC: A Dataset for the Automatic Examination of Definiteness in Patent Claimscited by 3
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- 2025Explainable Artificial Intelligence Techniques for Software Development Lifecycle: A Phase-specific Surveycited by 2
- 2025Semantic-Driven Topic Modeling for Analyzing Creativity in Virtual Brainstormingcited by 2
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- 2026Concerning Uncertainty -- A Systematic Survey of Uncertainty-Aware XAIcited by 2
- 2025Explainable Artificial Intelligence Techniques for Interpretation of Food Models: a Reviewcited by 1
- 2025Recent Advances and Future Directions in Literature-Based Discoverycited by 1
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- 2026Explainable AI: Context-Aware Layer-Wise Integrated Gradients for Explaining Transformer Modelscited by 1
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- 2026Explainable Reinforcement Learning via Physics-Aware Policy Distillation27 Jul 2026
- 2026Beyond Shapley: Efficient Computation of Asymmetric Shapley Values23 Jun 2026
- 2026Explaining RhythmFormer: A Systematic XAI Analysis of Periodic Sparse Attention for Remote Photoplethysmography11 Jun 2026
- 2026NeuroViz: Real-time Interactive Visualization of Forward and Backward Passes in Neural Network Training3 May 2026
- 2026AttentionBender: Manipulating Cross-Attention in Video Diffusion Transformers as a Creative Probe22 Apr 2026
- 2026A Two-Stage LLM Framework for Accessible and Verified XAI Explanations14 Apr 2026
- 2026Concerning Uncertainty -- A Systematic Survey of Uncertainty-Aware XAI27 Mar 2026
- 2026Fusion-CAM: Integrating Gradient and Region-Based Class Activation Maps for Robust Visual Explanations5 Mar 2026
- 2026Enhancing Physics-Informed Neural Networks with Domain-aware Fourier Features: Towards Improved Performance and Interpretable Results3 Mar 2026
- 2026XAI-enhanced Comparative Opinion Mining via Aspect-based Scoring and Semantic Reasoning1 Mar 2026
- 2026cc-Shapley: Measuring Multivariate Feature Importance Needs Causal Context23 Feb 2026
34 more
- 2026Behavior Learning (BL): Learning Hierarchical Optimization Structures from Data23 Feb 2026
- 2026The Confusion is Real: GRAPHIC -- A Network Science Approach to Confusion Matrices in Deep Learning23 Feb 2026
- 2026Rules or Weights? Comparing User Understanding of Explainable AI Techniques with the Cognitive XAI-Adaptive Model23 Feb 2026
- 2026Explainable AI: Context-Aware Layer-Wise Integrated Gradients for Explaining Transformer Models18 Feb 2026
- 2026Grandes Modelos de Linguagem Multimodais (MLLMs): Da Teoria `a Pr'atica11 Feb 2026
- 2026Priority-Aware Shapley Value10 Feb 2026
- 2026Scientific Theory of a Black-Box: A Life Cycle-Scale XAI Framework Based on Constructive Empiricism2 Feb 2026
- 2026Instance-Aligned Captions for Explainable Video Anomaly Detection13 Jan 2026
- 2025Toward Explaining Large Language Models in Software Engineering Tasks23 Dec 2025
- 2025Random Feature Spiking Neural Networks1 Oct 2025
- 2025Toxicity in Online Platforms and AI Systems: A Survey of Needs, Challenges, Mitigations, and Future Directions29 Sep 2025
- 2025Towards Transparent AI: A Survey on Explainable Language Models25 Sep 2025
- 2025Semantic-Driven Topic Modeling for Analyzing Creativity in Virtual Brainstorming20 Sep 2025
- 2025Feature Attribution in 5G Intrusion Detection: A Statistical vs. Logic-Based Comparison12 Sep 2025
- 2025Bilingual Word Level Language Identification for Omotic Languages5 Sep 2025
- 2025Charting the Future of Scholarly Knowledge with AI: A Community Perspective27 Aug 2025
- 2025ShadowNPU: System and Algorithm Co-design for NPU-Centric On-Device LLM Inference22 Aug 2025
- 2025A Concept-based approach to Voice Disorder Detection23 Jul 2025
- 2025Counterfactual Visual Explanation via Causally-Guided Adversarial Steering14 Jul 2025
- 2025Recent Advances and Future Directions in Literature-Based Discovery14 Jun 2025
- 2025Explainable AI: XAI-Guided Context-Aware Data Augmentation4 Jun 2025
- 2025PEDANTIC: A Dataset for the Automatic Examination of Definiteness in Patent Claims27 May 2025
- 2025Explainable Artificial Intelligence Techniques for Software Development Lifecycle: A Phase-specific Survey11 May 2025
- 2025Enhancing Trust Through Standards: A Comparative Risk-Impact Framework for Aligning ISO AI Standards with Global Ethical and Regulatory Contexts22 Apr 2025
- 2025Explainable Artificial Intelligence Techniques for Interpretation of Food Models: a Review12 Apr 2025
- 2025Out-of-Distribution Generalization in Time Series: A Survey18 Mar 2025
- 2025A Unified Framework with Novel Metrics for Evaluating the Effectiveness of XAI Techniques in LLMs6 Mar 2025
- 2025Improving the Perturbation-Based Explanation of Deepfake Detectors Through the Use of Adversarially-Generated Samples6 Feb 2025
- 2025Evaluating the Effectiveness of XAI Techniques for Encoder-Based Language Models26 Jan 2025
- 2024Multi-SpaCE: Multi-Objective Subsequence-based Sparse Counterfactual Explanations for Multivariate Time Series Classification14 Dec 2024
- 2024Investigating the Effectiveness of Explainability Methods in Parkinson's Detection from Speech12 Nov 2024
- 2024Explainability of Point Cloud Neural Networks Using SMILE: Statistical Model-Agnostic Interpretability with Local Explanations20 Oct 2024
- 2024Ethio-Fake: Cutting-Edge Approaches to Combat Fake News in Under-Resourced Languages Using Explainable AI3 Oct 2024
- 2024Semantic-Driven Topic Modeling Using Transformer-Based Embeddings and Clustering Algorithms30 Sep 2024
- 2025Out-of-Distribution Generalization in Time Series: A Surveycited by 15
- 2024Semantic-Driven Topic Modeling Using Transformer-Based Embeddings and Clustering Algorithmscited by 8
- 2024Ethio-Fake: Cutting-Edge Approaches to Combat Fake News in Under-Resourced Languages Using Explainable AIcited by 8
- 2025Evaluating the Effectiveness of XAI Techniques for Encoder-Based Language Modelscited by 7
- 2025A Unified Framework with Novel Metrics for Evaluating the Effectiveness of XAI Techniques in LLMscited by 7
- 2025Explainable AI: XAI-Guided Context-Aware Data Augmentationcited by 5
- 2024Explainability of Point Cloud Neural Networks Using SMILE: Statistical Model-Agnostic Interpretability with Local Explanationscited by 4
- 2024Investigating the Effectiveness of Explainability Methods in Parkinson's Detection from Speechcited by 4
- 2025ShadowNPU: System and Algorithm Co-design for NPU-Centric On-Device LLM Inferencecited by 4
- 2026Instance-Aligned Captions for Explainable Video Anomaly Detectioncited by 4
- 2024Multi-SpaCE: Multi-Objective Subsequence-based Sparse Counterfactual Explanations for Multivariate Time Series Classificationcited by 3
- 2025PEDANTIC: A Dataset for the Automatic Examination of Definiteness in Patent Claimscited by 3
12 most cited of 44 All 44 (JSON)
- 2026From objective discovery to prediction of global ocean eco-provinces: A pathway for trustworthy learning19 Aug 2026
- 2026Explainable Reinforcement Learning via Physics-Aware Policy Distillation27 Jul 2026
- 2026Beyond Shapley: Efficient Computation of Asymmetric Shapley Values23 Jun 2026
- 2026Explaining RhythmFormer: A Systematic XAI Analysis of Periodic Sparse Attention for Remote Photoplethysmography11 Jun 2026
- 2026NeuroViz: Real-time Interactive Visualization of Forward and Backward Passes in Neural Network Training3 May 2026
- 2026A Two-Stage LLM Framework for Accessible and Verified XAI Explanations14 Apr 2026
- 2026Concerning Uncertainty -- A Systematic Survey of Uncertainty-Aware XAI27 Mar 2026
- 2026Fusion-CAM: Integrating Gradient and Region-Based Class Activation Maps for Robust Visual Explanations5 Mar 2026
- 2026Enhancing Physics-Informed Neural Networks with Domain-aware Fourier Features: Towards Improved Performance and Interpretable Results3 Mar 2026
- 2026XAI-enhanced Comparative Opinion Mining via Aspect-based Scoring and Semantic Reasoning1 Mar 2026
- 2026cc-Shapley: Measuring Multivariate Feature Importance Needs Causal Context23 Feb 2026
- 2026Behavior Learning (BL): Learning Hierarchical Optimization Structures from Data23 Feb 2026
12 newest of 44 All 44 (JSON)