The AI Disruption Speaker Series: Rosina Weber

Rosina Weber is a professor of information science and computer science at Drexel University, where she advises students with interdisciplinary interests. Her interdisciplinary research spans legal, biomedical, and military domains, as well as academic and business problems. While investigating hybrid approaches, she has specialized in case-based reasoning (CBR) and explainable AI. Her research has been funded by DARPA, NIH, DHS, and international agencies. Her scholarship appears in venues such as AI Magazine, Applied AI Letters, Expert Systems with Applications, Knowledge-Based Systems, AAAI, and ICCBR. She has earned best-paper and research honors, co-chaired multiple XAI workshops, delivered XAI tutorials, and taught AI to both computer science majors and students in non-technical disciplines. She is an elected member of the AAAI Executive Council and a member of AAAS, AWIS, ACL, and NDM.

Abstract:
Researchers who study how artificial intelligence (AI) methods explain their decisions often discuss the field’s controversies and limitations. Some even contend that many publications offer little or no substantive contribution. In this talk, I illustrate the claim that explainable AI (XAI) is in trouble by describing four problems: disagreements over XAI’s scope, a lack of definitional cohesion, weak motivations for XAI research, and inconsistent evaluation practices. I then analyze the potential causes, linking these problems to the field’s interdisciplinary nature and to inadequate scientific rigor. This analysis yields a set of open research questions and recommendations for avoiding these problems. Finally, I discuss what this all means for the AI disruption we are now living.

About the speaker series:
The CIRSS Speaker Series continues in Spring 2026 on the new theme of “The AI Disruption.” Our speakers will discuss how recent advances in AI have reshaped their research — what has been made easier and what has become more difficult — and reflect upon its broader disruptive impact on society.

We meet most Wednesdays, 9am-10am Central time, in Zoom.  Everyone is welcome to attend.  More information, including upcoming speaker schedule and links to recordings, is available on the series website.  For weekly updates on upcoming talks, subscribe to our CIRSS Seminars mailing list.  Our Spring 2026 series is led by Yuanxi Fu and Timothy McPhillips, and supported by the Center for Informatics Research in Science and Scholarship (CIRSS) and the School of Information Sciences at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign.