Normalized AOPC: Fixing Misleading Faithfulness Metrics for Feature Attribution Explainability

Fuente: arXiv
Salvato in:
Dettagli Bibliografici
Autori principali: Edin, Joakim, Motzfeldt, Andreas Geert, Christensen, Casper L., Ruotsalo, Tuukka, Maaløe, Lars, Maistro, Maria
Natura: Preprint
Pubblicazione: 2024
Soggetti:
Accesso online:
Tags: Aggiungi Tag
Nessun Tag, puoi essere il primo ad aggiungerne!!
_version_ 1866912388468441088
author Edin, Joakim
Motzfeldt, Andreas Geert
Christensen, Casper L.
Ruotsalo, Tuukka
Maaløe, Lars
Maistro, Maria
author_facet Edin, Joakim
Motzfeldt, Andreas Geert
Christensen, Casper L.
Ruotsalo, Tuukka
Maaløe, Lars
Maistro, Maria
contents Deep neural network predictions are notoriously difficult to interpret. Feature attribution methods aim to explain these predictions by identifying the contribution of each input feature. Faithfulness, often evaluated using the area over the perturbation curve (AOPC), reflects feature attributions' accuracy in describing the internal mechanisms of deep neural networks. However, many studies rely on AOPC to compare faithfulness across different models, which we show can lead to false conclusions about models' faithfulness. Specifically, we find that AOPC is sensitive to variations in the model, resulting in unreliable cross-model comparisons. Moreover, AOPC scores are difficult to interpret in isolation without knowing the model-specific lower and upper limits. To address these issues, we propose a normalization approach, Normalized AOPC (NAOPC), enabling consistent cross-model evaluations and more meaningful interpretation of individual scores. Our experiments demonstrate that this normalization can radically change AOPC results, questioning the conclusions of earlier studies and offering a more robust framework for assessing feature attribution faithfulness. Our code is available at https://github.com/JoakimEdin/naopc.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2408_08137
institution arXiv
publishDate 2024
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle Normalized AOPC: Fixing Misleading Faithfulness Metrics for Feature Attribution Explainability
Edin, Joakim
Motzfeldt, Andreas Geert
Christensen, Casper L.
Ruotsalo, Tuukka
Maaløe, Lars
Maistro, Maria
Machine Learning
I.2.0
Deep neural network predictions are notoriously difficult to interpret. Feature attribution methods aim to explain these predictions by identifying the contribution of each input feature. Faithfulness, often evaluated using the area over the perturbation curve (AOPC), reflects feature attributions' accuracy in describing the internal mechanisms of deep neural networks. However, many studies rely on AOPC to compare faithfulness across different models, which we show can lead to false conclusions about models' faithfulness. Specifically, we find that AOPC is sensitive to variations in the model, resulting in unreliable cross-model comparisons. Moreover, AOPC scores are difficult to interpret in isolation without knowing the model-specific lower and upper limits. To address these issues, we propose a normalization approach, Normalized AOPC (NAOPC), enabling consistent cross-model evaluations and more meaningful interpretation of individual scores. Our experiments demonstrate that this normalization can radically change AOPC results, questioning the conclusions of earlier studies and offering a more robust framework for assessing feature attribution faithfulness. Our code is available at https://github.com/JoakimEdin/naopc.
title Normalized AOPC: Fixing Misleading Faithfulness Metrics for Feature Attribution Explainability
topic Machine Learning
I.2.0
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2408.08137