Legally-Informed Explainable AI

Abstract: Explanations for AI systems are intended to support the people who are impacted by AI systems in high-stakes decision-making environments, such as doctors, patients, teachers, students, housing applicants, and many others. To protect people and support the responsible development of AI, explanations need to be actionable--helping people take pragmatic action in response to an AI system--and contestable--enabling people to push back against an AI system and its determinations. For many high-stakes domains, such as healthcare, education, and finance, the sociotechnical environment includes significant legal implications that impact how people use AI explanations. For example, physicians who use AI decision support systems may need information on how accepting or rejecting an AI determination will protect them from lawsuits or help them advocate for their patients. In this paper, we make the case for Legally-Informed Explainable AI, responding to the need to integrate and design for legal considerations when creating AI explanations. We describe three stakeholder groups with different informational and actionability needs, and provide practical recommendations to tackle design challenges around the design of explainable AI systems that incorporate legal considerations.