Explainable AI: Explanation, Semantics and Ontology prof. Giancarlo Guizzardi from university of Twente, NL

In this guest lecture, we explore the critical relationship between semantics, ontology, and explanation in the context of cyber-human systems, where human and computational components must interoperate meaningfully to be trustworthy. These systems depend on both the ethical design and semantic coherence of their components, as well as transparent explanations of how their interactions contribute to human values and goals.

The lecture introduces Ontological Unpacking, a novel approach to explanation that goes beyond traditional descriptive models by offering explanatory, semantically rich representations of domain knowledge, such as conceptual models and knowledge graphs. This approach is essential for ensuring semantic interoperability and trustworthiness in AI systems. The talk also critiques the current trend in Explainable AI (XAI), arguing that merely producing symbolic artifacts like decision trees or counterfactuals is insufficient, as these artifacts do not inherently provide the deep interpretability required for true explanation.

Prof. Giancarlo Guizzardi

Giancarlo Guizzardi is a Full Professor of Software Science and Evolution as well as Chair and Department Head of Semantics, Cybersecurity & Services (SCS) at the University of Twente, The Netherlands. He has also been a Guest Professor at Stockholm University (Sweden), the Technical University of Vienna (Austria), and the University of Trento (Italy).

He has been active for nearly three decades in the areas of Formal and Applied Ontology, Conceptual Modeling, Enterprise Computing and Information Systems Engineering, working with a multidisciplinary approach in Computer Science that aggregates results from Philosophy, Cognitive Science, Logics and Linguistics.

Prof. Guizzardi is the main contributor to the Unified Foundational Ontology (UFO) and to the OntoUML modeling language. Over the years, he has delivered keynote speeches in several key international conferences in these fields (e.g., ER, CAiSE, BPM, RCIS, IEEE ICSC). He is currently an associate editor of a number of journals including Applied Ontology and Data & Knowledge Engineering, a co-editor of the Lecture Notes in Business Information Processing series, and a member of several international journal editorial boards. He is currently the Chair of the Steering Committee of the International Conference on Conceptual Modeling (ER), a member of the Steering Committees of CAiSE, EDOC, and IEEE CBI, and a member of the Advisory Board of the International Association for Ontology and its Applications (IAOA). Finally, he is an ER fellow.