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Main Authors: Wen, Ximing, Tan, Wenjuan, Weber, Rosina O.
Format: Preprint
Published: 2024
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Online Access:https://arxiv.org/abs/2409.13312
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author Wen, Ximing
Tan, Wenjuan
Weber, Rosina O.
author_facet Wen, Ximing
Tan, Wenjuan
Weber, Rosina O.
contents Pretrained transformer-based Language Models (LMs) are well-known for their ability to achieve significant improvement on text classification tasks with their powerful word embeddings, but their black-box nature, which leads to a lack of interpretability, has been a major concern. In this work, we introduce GAProtoNet, a novel white-box Multi-head Graph Attention-based Prototypical Network designed to explain the decisions of text classification models built with LM encoders. In our approach, the input vector and prototypes are regarded as nodes within a graph, and we utilize multi-head graph attention to selectively construct edges between the input node and prototype nodes to learn an interpretable prototypical representation. During inference, the model makes decisions based on a linear combination of activated prototypes weighted by the attention score assigned for each prototype, allowing its choices to be transparently explained by the attention weights and the prototypes projected into the closest matching training examples. Experiments on multiple public datasets show our approach achieves superior results without sacrificing the accuracy of the original black-box LMs. We also compare with four alternative prototypical network variations and our approach achieves the best accuracy and F1 among all. Our case study and visualization of prototype clusters also demonstrate the efficiency in explaining the decisions of black-box models built with LMs.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2409_13312
institution arXiv
publishDate 2024
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle GAProtoNet: A Multi-head Graph Attention-based Prototypical Network for Interpretable Text Classification
Wen, Ximing
Tan, Wenjuan
Weber, Rosina O.
Computation and Language
Artificial Intelligence
Pretrained transformer-based Language Models (LMs) are well-known for their ability to achieve significant improvement on text classification tasks with their powerful word embeddings, but their black-box nature, which leads to a lack of interpretability, has been a major concern. In this work, we introduce GAProtoNet, a novel white-box Multi-head Graph Attention-based Prototypical Network designed to explain the decisions of text classification models built with LM encoders. In our approach, the input vector and prototypes are regarded as nodes within a graph, and we utilize multi-head graph attention to selectively construct edges between the input node and prototype nodes to learn an interpretable prototypical representation. During inference, the model makes decisions based on a linear combination of activated prototypes weighted by the attention score assigned for each prototype, allowing its choices to be transparently explained by the attention weights and the prototypes projected into the closest matching training examples. Experiments on multiple public datasets show our approach achieves superior results without sacrificing the accuracy of the original black-box LMs. We also compare with four alternative prototypical network variations and our approach achieves the best accuracy and F1 among all. Our case study and visualization of prototype clusters also demonstrate the efficiency in explaining the decisions of black-box models built with LMs.
title GAProtoNet: A Multi-head Graph Attention-based Prototypical Network for Interpretable Text Classification
topic Computation and Language
Artificial Intelligence
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2409.13312