Explainable, Interpretable & Trustworthy AI for Intelligent Digital Twin: Case Study on Remaining Useful Life

Abstract: AI and Machine learning (ML) are increasingly used in energy and engineering systems, but these models must be fair, unbiased, and explainable. It is critical to have confidence in AI's trustworthiness. ML techniques have been useful in predicting important parameters and in improving model performance. However, for these AI techniques to be useful for making decisions, they need to be audited, accounted for, and easy to understand. Therefore, the use of explainable AI (XAI) and interpretable machine learning (IML) is crucial for the accurate prediction of prognostics, such as remaining useful life (RUL), in a digital twin system, to make it intelligent while ensuring that the AI model is transparent in its decision-making processes and that the predictions it generates can be understood and trusted by users. By using AI that is explainable, interpretable, and trustworthy, intelligent digital twin systems can make more accurate predictions of RUL, leading to better maintenance and repair planning, and ultimately, improved system performance. The objective of this paper is to explain the ideas of XAI and IML and to justify the important role of AI/ML in the digital twin framework and components, which requires XAI to understand the prediction better. This paper explains the importance of XAI and IML in both local and global aspects to ensure the use of trustworthy AI/ML applications for RUL prediction. We used the RUL prediction for the XAI and IML studies and leveraged the integrated Python toolbox for interpretable machine learning~(PiML).