Machine Understanding

What do Artificial Intelligence (AI) systems "understand"? This question arises not only in assessing a system's intelligence, but in evaluation practices to ensure the safe and responsible deployment of AI. Drawing on scholarship from philosophy and cognitive science, and informed by current practices in AI, we develop a framework for asking more precise questions and making more precise claims about machine understanding. We discuss different instantiations of understanding systems and the range of targets of understanding, ultimately offering a landscape of candidate accounts of understanding. Our goal is to provide conceptual tools for those working to assess or advance machine understanding.