Reliability and transparency all the more critical within AI systems

Extensive research in artificial intelligence is being conducted at Reykjavík University, where researchers are considered to be at the forefront of the field. One of them, Yngvi Björnsson, professor of computer science, has recently been awarded a project grant from Rannís for his work on Explainable Artificial Intelligence and Active Learning in Informed Search Agents.

He stresses that trust is essential for the responsible use of artificial intelligence, and to be able to use AI technology responsibly, people must be able to trust it and therefore the decisions these systems make automatically.

However, he notes that this trust is still lacking:

There is a significant gap in this area. The field of explainable AI has therefore grown in importance, as it directly addresses this challenge: making decisions made by AI systems more transparent and, consequently, more trustworthy.

Says Yngvi, adding that AI systems are increasingly making autonomous decisions, which makes reliability and transparency all the more critical. Ideally, such systems should be able to explain the reasoning behind every decision.

In more complex decision-making tasks, these systems typically rely on two components: search processes—where different scenarios are explored—and pre-trained AI models, such as neural networks. While some methods exist to explain model outputs on their own, there is still a lack of approaches that can explain decisions that combine both search and models.

The main objective of the project is to research and develop such methods, and also to explore whether they can lead to more efficient training of AI models.

Yngi explains, adding that his team has already been working on this research for several years and has published papers that have attracted considerable attention at leading international AI conferences. The new grant will allow the team to continue its work, including hiring two new PhD students.

The project is being carried out in collaboration with two prominent European universities that are also leaders in AI research.

Further information on the 2026 Research Fund grants from Rannís is available under: Scientists and students at Reykjavík University receive numerous grants from the Rannís Research Fund 2026.