Explainable Artificial Intelligence (XAI): How the Visualization of AI Predictions Affects User Cognitive Load and Confidence

Explainable Artificial Intelligence (XAI) aims to bring transparency to AI systems by translating, simplifying, and visualizing its decisions. While society remains skeptical about AI systems, studies show that transparent and explainable AI systems result in improved confidence between humans and AI. We present preliminary results from a study designed to assess two presentation-order methods and three AI decision visualization attribution models to determine each visualization's impact upon a user's cognitive load and confidence in the system by asking participants to complete a visual decision-making task. The results show that both the presentation order and the morphological clarity impact cognitive load. Furthermore, a negative correlation was revealed between cognitive load and confidence in the AI system. Our findings have implications for future AI systems design, which may facilitate better collaboration between humans and AI.