-score and 13.4% in Edit Score over the SOTA, SurgflowNetdemonstrates a significant improvement in workflow recognition for endoscopic pituitary surgery.

Automated Essay Scoring (AES) presents a key opportunity to improve student experience while reducing the administrative burden of academic staff. However existing methods for AES are reliant on large volumes of data and fail to consider the ordinal aspect of grading. As a result, when an institution introduces a new assessment, there may be no data available to train algorithms. In this paper, we demonstrate that metric learning architectures, specifically Prototypical Networks, offer robust performance on few-shot ordinal classification essay grading tasks. We introduce three novel weighted prototype calculation strategies designed to enhance class representation in ordinal few-shot text classification. These strategies improve how class knowledge is modeled from limited examples by refining the way prototypes are computed, incorporating weighted mechanisms for better differentiation. Results across four datasets show that our methods outperform existing baselines and the current state-of-the-art in ordinal few-shot text classification. Additionally, we compare our approach with three large language models (LLMs) using a prompt-based approach to few-shot learning and find that we achieve superior or comparable performance in all evaluated tasks.

Artificial intelligence (AI) advancements have significantly broadened its application across various sectors, simultaneously elevating concerns regarding the transparency and understandability of AI-driven decisions. Addressing these concerns, this paper embarks on an exploratory journey into Case-Based Reasoning (CBR) and Explainable Artificial Intelligence (XAI), critically examining their convergence and the potential this synergy holds for demystifying the decision-making processes of AI systems. We employ the concept of Explainable CBR (XCBR) system that leverages CBR to acquire case-based explanations or generate explanations using CBR methodologies to enhance AI decision explainability. Though the literature has few surveys on XCBR, recognizing its potential necessitates a detailed exploration of the principles for developing effective XCBR systems. We present a cycle-aligned perspective that examines how explainability functions can be embedded throughout the classical CBR phases: Retrieve, Reuse, Revise, and Retain. Drawing from a comprehensive literature review, we propose a set of six functional goals that reflect key explainability needs. These goals are mapped to six thematic categories, forming the basis of a structured XCBR taxonomy. The discussion extends to the broader challenges and prospects facing the CBR-XAI arena, setting the stage for future research directions. This paper offers design guidance and conceptual grounding for future XCBR research and system development.

Explainable AI (XAI) can greatly enhance user trust and satisfaction in AI-assisted decision-making processes. Recent findings suggest that a single explainer may not meet the diverse needs of multiple users in an AI system; indeed, even individual users may require multiple explanations. This highlights the necessity for a “multi-shot” approach, employing a combination of explainers to form what we introduce as an “explanation strategy”. Tailored to a specific user or a user group, an “explanation experience” describes interactions with personalised strategies designed to enhance their AI decision-making processes. The iSee platform is designed for the intelligent sharing and reuse of explanation experiences, using Case-based Reasoning to advance best practices in XAI. The platform provides tools that enable AI system designers, i.e. design users, to design and iteratively revise the most suitable explanation strategy for their AI system to satisfy end-user needs. All knowledge generated within the iSee platform is formalised by the iSee ontology for interoperability. We use a summative mixed methods study protocol to evaluate the usability and utility of the iSEE platform with six design users across varying levels of AI and XAI expertise. Our findings confirm that the iSee platform effectively generalises across applications and its potential to promote the adoption of XAI best practices.

As Artificial Intelligence (AI) systems become increasingly complex, ensuring their decisions are transparent and understandable to users has become paramount. This paper explores the integration of Case-Based Reasoning (CBR) with Explainable Artificial Intelligence (XAI) through a real-world example, which presents an innovative CBR-driven XAI platform. This study investigates how CBR, a method that solves new problems based on the solutions of similar past problems, can be harnessed to enhance the explainability of AI systems. Though the literature has few works on the synergy between CBR and XAI, exploring the principles for developing a CBR-driven XAI platform is necessary. This exploration outlines the key features and functionalities, examines the alignment of CBR principles with XAI goals to make AI reasoning more transparent to users, and discusses methodological strategies for integrating CBR into XAI frameworks. Through a case study of our CBR-driven XAI platform, iSee: Intelligent Sharing of Explanation Experience, we demonstrate the practical application of these principles, highlighting the enhancement of system transparency and user trust. The platform elucidates the decision-making processes of AI models and adapts to provide explanations tailored to diverse user needs. Our findings emphasize the importance of interdisciplinary approaches in AI research and the significant role CBR can play in advancing the goals of XAI.

Explainable Artificial Intelligence (XAI) is an emerging field within Artificial Intelligence (AI) that has provided many methods that enable humans to understand and interpret the outcomes of AI systems. However, deciding on the best explanation approach for a given AI problem is currently a challenging decision-making task. This paper presents the iSee project, which aims to address some of the XAI challenges by providing a unifying platform where personalized explanation experiences are generated using Case-Based Reasoning. An explanation experience includes the proposed solution to a particular explainability problem and its corresponding evaluation, provided by the end user. The ultimate goal is to provide an open catalog of explanation experiences that can be transferred to other scenarios where trustworthy AI is required.

Counterfactual Explanations (cf-XAI) describe the smallest changes in feature values necessary to change an outcome from one class to another. However, many cf-XAI methods neglect the feasibility of those changes. In this paper, we introduce a novel approach for presenting cf-XAI in natural language (Natural-XAI), giving careful consideration to actionable and comprehensible aspects while remaining cognizant of immutability and ethical concerns. We present three contributions to this endeavor. Firstly, through a user study, we identify two types of themes present in cf-XAI composed by humans: content-related, focusing on how features and their values are included from both the counterfactual and the query perspectives; and structure-related, focusing on the structure and terminology used for describing necessary value changes. Secondly, we introduce a feature actionability taxonomy with four clearly defined categories, to streamline the explanation presentation process. Using insights from the user study and our taxonomy, we created a generalisable template-based natural language generation (NLG) method compatible with existing explainers like DICE, NICE, and DisCERN, to produce counterfactuals that address the aforementioned limitations of existing approaches. Finally, we conducted a second user study to assess the performance of our taxonomy-guided NLG templates on three domains. Our findings show that the taxonomy-guided Natural-XAI approach (n-XAIT) received higher user ratings across all dimensions, with significantly improved results in the majority of the domains assessed for articulation, acceptability, feasibility, and sensitivity dimensions.

Counterfactual explanations highlight actionable knowledge which helps to understand how a machine learning model outcome could be altered to a more favourable outcome. Understanding actionable corrections in source code analysis can be critical to proactively mitigate security attacks that are caused by known vulnerabilities. In this paper, we present the DisCERN explainer for discovering counterfactuals for code vulnerability correction. Given a vulnerable code segment, DisCERN finds counterfactual (i.e. non-vulnerable) code segments and recommends actionable corrections. DisCERN uses feature attribution knowledge to identify potentially vulnerable code statements. Subsequently, it applies a substitution-focused correction, suggesting suitable fixes by analysing the nearest-unlike neighbour. Overall, DisCERN aims to identify vulnerabilities and correct them while preserving both the code syntax and the original functionality of the code. A user study evaluated the utility of counterfactuals for vulnerability detection and correction compared to more commonly used feature attribution explainers. The study revealed that counterfactuals foster positive shifts in mental models, effectively guiding users towards making vulnerability corrections. Furthermore, counterfactuals significantly reduced the cognitive load when detecting and correcting vulnerabilities in complex code segments. Despite these benefits, the user study showed that feature attribution explanations are still more widely accepted than counterfactuals, possibly due to the greater familiarity with the former and the novelty of the latter. These findings encourage further research and development into counterfactual explanations, as they demonstrate the potential for acceptability over time among developers as a reliable resource for both coding and training.

Counterfactual explanations focus on "actionable knowledge" to help end-users understand how a machine learning outcome could be changed to a more desirable outcome. For this purpose a counterfactual explainer needs to discover input dependencies that relate to outcome changes. Identifying the minimum subset of feature changes needed to action an output change in the decision is an interesting challenge for counterfactual explainers. The DisCERN algorithm introduced in this paper is a case-based counter-factual explainer. Here counterfactuals are formed by replacing feature values from a nearest unlike neighbour (NUN) until an actionable change is observed. We show how widely adopted feature relevance-based explainers (i.e. LIME, SHAP), can inform DisCERN to identify the minimum subset of "actionable features". We demonstrate our DisCERN algorithm on five datasets in a comparative study with the widely used optimisation-based counterfactual approach DiCE. Our results demonstrate that DisCERN outperformed DiCE by minimising both the number of feature changes and the amount of change necessary to create good counterfactual explanations.

Exercise adherence is a key component of digital behaviour change interventions for the self-management of musculoskeletal pain. Automated monitoring of exercise adherence requires sensors that can capture patients performing exercises and Machine Learning (ML) algorithms that can recognise exercises. In contrast to ambulatory activities that are recognisable with a wrist accelerometer data; exercises require multiple sensor modalities because of the complexity of movements and the settings involved. Exercise Recognition (ExR) pose many challenges to ML researchers due to the heterogeneity of the sensor modalities (e.g. image/video streams, wearables, pressure mats). We recently published MEx, a benchmark dataset for ExR, to promote the study of new and transferable HAR methods to improve ExR and benchmarked the state-of-the-art ML algorithms on 4 modalities. The results highlighted the need for fusion methods that unite the individual strengths of modalities. In this paper, we explore fusion methods with a focus on attention and propose a novel multi-modal hybrid attention fusion architecture mHAF for ExR. We achieve the best performance of 96.24% (F1-measure) with a modality combination of a pressure mat, a depth camera and an accelerometer on the thigh. mHAF significantly outperforms multiple baselines and the contribution of architecture components are verified with an ablation study. The benefits of attention fusion are clearly demonstrated by visualising attention weights; showing how mHAF learns feature importance and modality combinations suited for different exercise classes. We highlight the importance of improving deployability and minimising obtrusiveness by exploring the best performing 2 and 3 modality combinations.