Expanding HCXAI in the Age of AI Agents: Challenges and Recommendations

AI agents—autonomous, multi-tasking systems beyond traditional AI—will reshape human-AI interaction shifting the focus from a simple human-versus-system autonomy debate to a triadic model: human users, AI agents, and digital resources. Further, the widespread adoption of agentic systems as consumer products will accelerate the large-scale integration of novel human-AI agent hybridization into everyday life, necessitating renewed examinations of agent identity, accountability, and trust in AI agent-rich digital environments. In this position paper, we argue that HumanCentered eXplainable AI (HCXAI) can help addressing these trends by developing causal explanations that span multiple levels of abstraction and integrate different digital resources, as well as personalized, interactive explanations that serve as identity warranty mechanisms when humans and AI agents interact together and with other digital resources. Finally, as a research field, HCXAI can help redesign the explainability-trust relation in these novel digital ecosystems. We introduce examples of these explanations, calling for an interdisciplinary collaboration to refine these high-level proposals and ensure a still human-centered digital future.