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The Conversation
The Conversation
Sam Baron, Associate Professor, Philosophy of Science, Australian Catholic University

Philosophers have studied 'counterfactuals' for decades. Will they help us unlock the mysteries of AI?

Counterfactuals are claims about what would happen, were something to occur in a different way. For instance, we can ask what the world would be like had the internet never been developed. Shutterstock

Artificial intelligence is increasingly being rolled out all around the world to help make decisions in our lives, whether it’s loan decisions by banks, medical diagnoses, or US law enforcement predicting a criminal’s likelihood of re-offending.

Yet many AI systems are black boxes: no one understands how they work. This has led to a demand for “explainable AI”, so we can understand why an AI model yielded a specific output, and what biases may have played a role.

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