Even-Ifs From If-Onlys: Are the Best Semi-Factual Explanations Found Using Counterfactuals As Guides?

Fuente: arXiv
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Main Authors: Aryal, Saugat, Keane, Mark T.
Format: Preprint
Published: 2024
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author Aryal, Saugat
Keane, Mark T.
author_facet Aryal, Saugat
Keane, Mark T.
contents Recently, counterfactuals using "if-only" explanations have become very popular in eXplainable AI (XAI), as they describe which changes to feature-inputs of a black-box AI system result in changes to a (usually negative) decision-outcome. Even more recently, semi-factuals using "even-if" explanations have gained more attention. They elucidate the feature-input changes that do not change the decision-outcome of the AI system, with a potential to suggest more beneficial recourses. Some semi-factual methods use counterfactuals to the query-instance to guide semi-factual production (so-called counterfactual-guided methods), whereas others do not (so-called counterfactual-free methods). In this work, we perform comprehensive tests of 8 semi-factual methods on 7 datasets using 5 key metrics, to determine whether counterfactual guidance is necessary to find the best semi-factuals. The results of these tests suggests not, but rather that computing other aspects of the decision space lead to better semi-factual XAI.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2403_00980
institution arXiv
publishDate 2024
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle Even-Ifs From If-Onlys: Are the Best Semi-Factual Explanations Found Using Counterfactuals As Guides?
Aryal, Saugat
Keane, Mark T.
Artificial Intelligence
Recently, counterfactuals using "if-only" explanations have become very popular in eXplainable AI (XAI), as they describe which changes to feature-inputs of a black-box AI system result in changes to a (usually negative) decision-outcome. Even more recently, semi-factuals using "even-if" explanations have gained more attention. They elucidate the feature-input changes that do not change the decision-outcome of the AI system, with a potential to suggest more beneficial recourses. Some semi-factual methods use counterfactuals to the query-instance to guide semi-factual production (so-called counterfactual-guided methods), whereas others do not (so-called counterfactual-free methods). In this work, we perform comprehensive tests of 8 semi-factual methods on 7 datasets using 5 key metrics, to determine whether counterfactual guidance is necessary to find the best semi-factuals. The results of these tests suggests not, but rather that computing other aspects of the decision space lead to better semi-factual XAI.
title Even-Ifs From If-Onlys: Are the Best Semi-Factual Explanations Found Using Counterfactuals As Guides?
topic Artificial Intelligence
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2403.00980