Explainable AI for Reinforcement Learning via Causal Reasoning

Abstract

Reinforcement learning (RL) has achieved remarkable success in various domains, but its "black box" nature poses a significant challenge for real-world deployment. Understanding the rationale behind an RL agent's decisions is crucial for trust, debugging, and improving performance. This paper proposes a novel approach to explainable AI (XAI) within reinforcement learning by leveraging causal reasoning. We model the environment and the agent's policy using a causal Bayesian network. By performing inference through this network, we trace the causal chain of events leading to a specific action, providing a transparent explanation. This method moves beyond simply observing the agent's behavior to understanding the underlying reasons for its choices. The core of our approach lies in identifying and representing the causal relationships within the RL system, enabling us to dissect the decision-making process and ultimately build more robust and reliable RL agents. The proposed framework offers a significant step toward interpretable RL and addresses a critical limitation of current techniques. ---