Counterfactual Explanations of Black-box Machine Learning Models using Causal Discovery with Applications to Credit Rating

Fuente: arXiv
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Main Authors: Takahashi, Daisuke, Shimizu, Shohei, Tanaka, Takuma
Format: Preprint
Published: 2024
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author Takahashi, Daisuke
Shimizu, Shohei
Tanaka, Takuma
author_facet Takahashi, Daisuke
Shimizu, Shohei
Tanaka, Takuma
contents Explainable artificial intelligence (XAI) has helped elucidate the internal mechanisms of machine learning algorithms, bolstering their reliability by demonstrating the basis of their predictions. Several XAI models consider causal relationships to explain models by examining the input-output relationships of prediction models and the dependencies between features. The majority of these models have been based their explanations on counterfactual probabilities, assuming that the causal graph is known. However, this assumption complicates the application of such models to real data, given that the causal relationships between features are unknown in most cases. Thus, this study proposed a novel XAI framework that relaxed the constraint that the causal graph is known. This framework leveraged counterfactual probabilities and additional prior information on causal structure, facilitating the integration of a causal graph estimated through causal discovery methods and a black-box classification model. Furthermore, explanatory scores were estimated based on counterfactual probabilities. Numerical experiments conducted employing artificial data confirmed the possibility of estimating the explanatory score more accurately than in the absence of a causal graph. Finally, as an application to real data, we constructed a classification model of credit ratings assigned by Shiga Bank, Shiga prefecture, Japan. We demonstrated the effectiveness of the proposed method in cases where the causal graph is unknown.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2402_02678
institution arXiv
publishDate 2024
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle Counterfactual Explanations of Black-box Machine Learning Models using Causal Discovery with Applications to Credit Rating
Takahashi, Daisuke
Shimizu, Shohei
Tanaka, Takuma
Machine Learning
Explainable artificial intelligence (XAI) has helped elucidate the internal mechanisms of machine learning algorithms, bolstering their reliability by demonstrating the basis of their predictions. Several XAI models consider causal relationships to explain models by examining the input-output relationships of prediction models and the dependencies between features. The majority of these models have been based their explanations on counterfactual probabilities, assuming that the causal graph is known. However, this assumption complicates the application of such models to real data, given that the causal relationships between features are unknown in most cases. Thus, this study proposed a novel XAI framework that relaxed the constraint that the causal graph is known. This framework leveraged counterfactual probabilities and additional prior information on causal structure, facilitating the integration of a causal graph estimated through causal discovery methods and a black-box classification model. Furthermore, explanatory scores were estimated based on counterfactual probabilities. Numerical experiments conducted employing artificial data confirmed the possibility of estimating the explanatory score more accurately than in the absence of a causal graph. Finally, as an application to real data, we constructed a classification model of credit ratings assigned by Shiga Bank, Shiga prefecture, Japan. We demonstrated the effectiveness of the proposed method in cases where the causal graph is unknown.
title Counterfactual Explanations of Black-box Machine Learning Models using Causal Discovery with Applications to Credit Rating
topic Machine Learning
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2402.02678