A Multi-level Explainability Framework for Engineering and Understanding BDI Agents

As the complexity of software systems rises, the ability to provide explanations of system behavior has become a desirable property for any Artificial Intelligence based system, including autonomous multi-agent systems. While explainability is mainly explored to increase trust and understanding for end-users, it is also an interesting property from a software engineering perspective, supporting developers and designers in the debugging and validation phases. To address the different needs and expertise of these roles, we propose a framework that generates explanations at multiple levels of abstraction, enabling both the engineering and the understanding of BDI agents.

Authors

• Elena Yan Mines Saint-Etienne
• Samuele Burattini Alma Mater Studiorum, University of Bologna
• Jomi F. Hübner Federal University of Santa Catarina
• Alessandro Ricci Alma Mater Studiorum, University of Bologna

Keywords

• Explainable Agents
• Explainability
• BDI Agents