Current Trends, Challenges and Techniques in XAI Field; A Tertiary Study of XAI Research

This tertiary systematic literature review examines 29 systematic literature reviews and surveys in Explainable Artificial Intelligence (XAI) to uncover trends, limitations, and future directions. The study explores current explanation techniques, providing insights for researchers, practitioners, and policymakers interested in enhancing AI transparency. Notably, the increasing number of systematic literature reviews (SLRs) in XAI publications indicates a growing interest in the field. The review offers an annotated catalogue for human-computer interaction-focused XAI stakeholders, emphasising practitioner guidelines. Automated searches across ACM, IEEE, and Science Direct databases identified SLRs published between 2019 and May 2023, covering diverse application domains and topics. While adhering to methodological guidelines, the SLRs often lack primary study quality assessments. The review highlights ongoing challenges and future opportunities related to XAI evaluation standardisation, its impact on users, and interdisciplinary research on ethics and GDPR aspects. The 29 SLRs, analysing over two thousand papers, include five directly relevant to practitioners. Additionally, references from the SLRs were analysed to compile a list of frequently cited papers, serving as recommended foundational readings for newcomers to the field.