Applications of Social Attribution Theory in XAI

Abstract

A major problem facing artificial intelligence ethics is how to give AI the status of the agent and gain the trust of human beings. This is accompanied by the rise of Explanatory AI (XAI). The social attribution theory (SAT) started from the perception experiment of Hyde and others, then psychologists conducted a long-term analysis of the causes and reasons of human intentional action, and Mahler built a complete social psychological attribution model from this. Because SAT is based on action analysis, it can reflect its vast application potential in XAI, including the interpretation of artificial agent action, interpretation of beliefs and other folk psychology concepts, analysis of group intelligence, and the construction of normative agent action and the corresponding ethical explanation. These explorations can provide new ideas for XAI.

Keywords

• social attribution theory
• intention
• reason
• action
• explanation
• XAI