An important issue in deploying an autonomous system is how to enable human users and stakeholders to develop an appropriate level of trust in the system. It has been argued that a crucial mechanism to enable appropriate trust is the ability of a system to explain its behaviour. Obviously, such explanations need to be comprehensible to humans. Due to the perceived similarity in functioning between humans and autonomous systems, we argue that it makes sense to build on the results of extensive research in social sciences that explores how humans explain their behaviour. Using similar concepts for explanation is argued to help with comprehensibility, since the concepts are familiar. Following work in the social sciences, we propose the use of a folk-psychological model that utilises beliefs, desires, and “valuings”. We propose a formal framework for constructing explanations of the behaviour of an autonomous system, present an (implemented) algorithm for giving explanations, and present evaluation results.

部署自治系统的一个重要问题是如何使人类用户和利益相关者对系统建立适当的信任级别。有人认为，实现适当信任的关键机制是系统解释其行为的能力。显然，这样的解释需要人类能够理解。由于人类和自主系统之间在功能上的感知相似性，我们认为以社会科学广泛研究的结果为基础，探索人类如何解释他们的行为是有意义的。使用相似的概念进行解释被认为有助于理解，因为这些概念是熟悉的。继社会科学领域的工作之后，我们建议使用利用信仰、欲望和“价值观”的民间心理学模型。