The quest for interpretable and responsible artificial intelligence

Artificial Intelligence (AI) provides many opportunities to improve private and public life. Discovering patterns and structures in large troves of data in an automated manner is a core component of data science, and currently drives applications in computational biology, finance, law and robotics. However, such a highly positive impact is coupled with significant challenges: How do we understand the decisions suggested by these systems in order that we can trust them? How can they be held accountable for those decisions? In this short survey, we cover some of the motivations and trends in the area that attempt to address such questions.Comment: This is a slightly edited version of an article to appear in The Biochemist, Portland Press, October 201