Constrained Interval Type-2 Fuzzy Classification Systems for Explainable AI (XAI)

D'Alterio, Pasquale ; Garibaldi, Jonathan M.; John, Robert I.

Abstract

In recent year, there has been a growing need for intelligent systems that not only are able to provide reliable classifications but can also produce explanations for the decisions they make. The demand for increased explainability has led to the emergence of explainable artificial intelligence (XAI) as a specific research field. In this context, fuzzy logic systems represent a promising tool thanks to their inherently interpretable structure. The use of a rule-base and linguistic terms, in fact, have allowed researchers to create models that are able to produce explanations in natural language for each of the classifications they make. So far, however, designing systems that make use of interval type-2 (IT2) fuzzy logic and also give explanations for their outputs has been very challenging, partially due to the presence of the type-reduction step. In this paper, it will be shown how constrained interval type-2 (CIT2) fuzzy sets represent a valid alternative to conventional interval type-2 sets in order to address this issue. Through the analysis of two case studies from the medical domain, it is shown how explainable CIT2 classifiers are produced. These systems can explain which rules contributed to the creation of each of the endpoints of the output interval centroid, while showing (in these examples) the same level of accuracy as their IT2 counterpart.

Citation

D'Alterio, P., Garibaldi, J. M., & John, R. I. (2020). Constrained Interval Type-2 Fuzzy Classification Systems for Explainable AI (XAI). In Proceedings of IEEE World Congress on Computational Intelligence (WCCI) 2020

• Conference Name: IEEE World Congress on Computational Intelligence (WCCI) 2020
• Start Date: Jul 19, 2020
• End Date: Jul 24, 2020
• Acceptance Date: Mar 20, 2020
• Online Publication Date: Jul 24, 2020
• Publication Date: Jul 24, 2020
• Deposit Date: Aug 10, 2020
• Publicly Available Date: Aug 10, 2020
• Book Title: Proceedings of IEEE World Congress on Computational Intelligence (WCCI) 2020
• Keywords: Index Terms-Constrained interval type-2; XAI; explainable type-2 fuzzy systems
• Public URL: https://nottingham-repository.worktribe.com/output/4825085
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