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Abstract Demands to manage the risks of artificial intelligence (AI) are growing. These demands and the government standards arising from them both call for trustworthy AI. In response, we adopt a convergent approach to review, evaluate, and synthesize research on the trust and trustworthiness of AI in the environmental sciences and propose a research agenda. Evidential and conceptual histories of research on trust and trustworthiness reveal persisting ambiguities and measurement shortcomings related to inconsistent attention to the contextual and social dependencies and dynamics of trust. Potentially underappreciated in the development of trustworthy AI for environmental sciences is the importance of engaging AI users and other stakeholders, which human–AI teaming perspectives on AI development similarly underscore. Co‐development strategies may also help reconcile efforts to develop performance‐based trustworthiness standards with dynamic and contextual notions of trust. We illustrate the importance of these themes with applied examples and show how insights from research on trust and the communication of risk and uncertainty can help advance the understanding of trust and trustworthiness of AI in the environmental sciences. 

Abstract As artificial intelligence (AI) methods are increasingly used to develop new guidance intended for operational use by forecasters, it is critical to evaluate whether forecasters deem the guidance trustworthy. Past trust-related AI research suggests that certain attributes (e.g., understanding how the AI was trained, interactivity, and performance) contribute to users perceiving the AI as trustworthy. However, little research has been done to examine the role of these and other attributes for weather forecasters. In this study, we conducted 16 online interviews with National Weather Service (NWS) forecasters to examine (i) how they make guidance use decisions and (ii) how the AI model technique used, training, input variables, performance, and developers as well as interacting with the model output influenced their assessments of trustworthiness of new guidance. The interviews pertained to either a random forest model predicting the probability of severe hail or a 2D convolutional neural network model predicting the probability of storm mode. When taken as a whole, our findings illustrate how forecasters’ assessment of AI guidance trustworthiness is a process that occurs over time rather than automatically or at first introduction. We recommend developers center end users when creating new AI guidance tools, making end users integral to their thinking and efforts. This approach is essential for the development of useful andusedtools. The details of these findings can help AI developers understand how forecasters perceive AI guidance and inform AI development and refinement efforts. Significance StatementWe used a mixed-methods quantitative and qualitative approach to understand how National Weather Service (NWS) forecasters 1) make guidance use decisions within their operational forecasting process and 2) assess the trustworthiness of prototype guidance developed using artificial intelligence (AI). When taken as a whole, our findings illustrate that forecasters’ assessment of AI guidance trustworthiness is a process that occurs over time rather than automatically and suggest that developers must center the end user when creating new AI guidance tools to ensure that the developed tools are useful andused.