3,149 research outputs found
Problems with Shapley-value-based explanations as feature importance measures
Game-theoretic formulations of feature importance have become popular as a
way to "explain" machine learning models. These methods define a cooperative
game between the features of a model and distribute influence among these input
elements using some form of the game's unique Shapley values. Justification for
these methods rests on two pillars: their desirable mathematical properties,
and their applicability to specific motivations for explanations. We show that
mathematical problems arise when Shapley values are used for feature importance
and that the solutions to mitigate these necessarily induce further complexity,
such as the need for causal reasoning. We also draw on additional literature to
argue that Shapley values do not provide explanations which suit human-centric
goals of explainability.Comment: Accepted to ICML 202
Explaining Data-Driven Decisions made by AI Systems: The Counterfactual Approach
We examine counterfactual explanations for explaining the decisions made by
model-based AI systems. The counterfactual approach we consider defines an
explanation as a set of the system's data inputs that causally drives the
decision (i.e., changing the inputs in the set changes the decision) and is
irreducible (i.e., changing any subset of the inputs does not change the
decision). We (1) demonstrate how this framework may be used to provide
explanations for decisions made by general, data-driven AI systems that may
incorporate features with arbitrary data types and multiple predictive models,
and (2) propose a heuristic procedure to find the most useful explanations
depending on the context. We then contrast counterfactual explanations with
methods that explain model predictions by weighting features according to their
importance (e.g., SHAP, LIME) and present two fundamental reasons why we should
carefully consider whether importance-weight explanations are well-suited to
explain system decisions. Specifically, we show that (i) features that have a
large importance weight for a model prediction may not affect the corresponding
decision, and (ii) importance weights are insufficient to communicate whether
and how features influence decisions. We demonstrate this with several concise
examples and three detailed case studies that compare the counterfactual
approach with SHAP to illustrate various conditions under which counterfactual
explanations explain data-driven decisions better than importance weights
The Grammar of Interactive Explanatory Model Analysis
The growing need for in-depth analysis of predictive models leads to a series
of new methods for explaining their local and global properties. Which of these
methods is the best? It turns out that this is an ill-posed question. One
cannot sufficiently explain a black-box machine learning model using a single
method that gives only one perspective. Isolated explanations are prone to
misunderstanding, which inevitably leads to wrong or simplistic reasoning. This
problem is known as the Rashomon effect and refers to diverse, even
contradictory interpretations of the same phenomenon. Surprisingly, the
majority of methods developed for explainable machine learning focus on a
single aspect of the model behavior. In contrast, we showcase the problem of
explainability as an interactive and sequential analysis of a model. This paper
presents how different Explanatory Model Analysis (EMA) methods complement each
other and why it is essential to juxtapose them together. The introduced
process of Interactive EMA (IEMA) derives from the algorithmic side of
explainable machine learning and aims to embrace ideas developed in cognitive
sciences. We formalize the grammar of IEMA to describe potential human-model
dialogues. IEMA is implemented in the human-centered framework that adopts
interactivity, customizability and automation as its main traits. Combined,
these methods enhance the responsible approach to predictive modeling.Comment: 17 pages, 10 figures, 3 table
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