Model Reconstruction Using Counterfactual Explanations: A Perspective From Polytope Theory

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Hauptverfasser: Dissanayake, Pasan, Dutta, Sanghamitra
Format: Preprint
Veröffentlicht: 2024
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author Dissanayake, Pasan
Dutta, Sanghamitra
author_facet Dissanayake, Pasan
Dutta, Sanghamitra
contents Counterfactual explanations provide ways of achieving a favorable model outcome with minimum input perturbation. However, counterfactual explanations can also be leveraged to reconstruct the model by strategically training a surrogate model to give similar predictions as the original (target) model. In this work, we analyze how model reconstruction using counterfactuals can be improved by further leveraging the fact that the counterfactuals also lie quite close to the decision boundary. Our main contribution is to derive novel theoretical relationships between the error in model reconstruction and the number of counterfactual queries required using polytope theory. Our theoretical analysis leads us to propose a strategy for model reconstruction that we call Counterfactual Clamping Attack (CCA) which trains a surrogate model using a unique loss function that treats counterfactuals differently than ordinary instances. Our approach also alleviates the related problem of decision boundary shift that arises in existing model reconstruction approaches when counterfactuals are treated as ordinary instances. Experimental results demonstrate that our strategy improves fidelity between the target and surrogate model predictions on several datasets.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2405_05369
institution arXiv
publishDate 2024
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle Model Reconstruction Using Counterfactual Explanations: A Perspective From Polytope Theory
Dissanayake, Pasan
Dutta, Sanghamitra
Machine Learning
Cryptography and Security
Computers and Society
Information Theory
Counterfactual explanations provide ways of achieving a favorable model outcome with minimum input perturbation. However, counterfactual explanations can also be leveraged to reconstruct the model by strategically training a surrogate model to give similar predictions as the original (target) model. In this work, we analyze how model reconstruction using counterfactuals can be improved by further leveraging the fact that the counterfactuals also lie quite close to the decision boundary. Our main contribution is to derive novel theoretical relationships between the error in model reconstruction and the number of counterfactual queries required using polytope theory. Our theoretical analysis leads us to propose a strategy for model reconstruction that we call Counterfactual Clamping Attack (CCA) which trains a surrogate model using a unique loss function that treats counterfactuals differently than ordinary instances. Our approach also alleviates the related problem of decision boundary shift that arises in existing model reconstruction approaches when counterfactuals are treated as ordinary instances. Experimental results demonstrate that our strategy improves fidelity between the target and surrogate model predictions on several datasets.
title Model Reconstruction Using Counterfactual Explanations: A Perspective From Polytope Theory
topic Machine Learning
Cryptography and Security
Computers and Society
Information Theory
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2405.05369