Saved in:
Bibliographic Details
Main Authors: Panagiotou, Emmanouil, Heurich, Manuel, Landgraf, Tim, Ntoutsi, Eirini
Format: Preprint
Published: 2024
Subjects:
Online Access:https://arxiv.org/abs/2410.10463
Tags: Add Tag
No Tags, Be the first to tag this record!
_version_ 1866914971628077056
author Panagiotou, Emmanouil
Heurich, Manuel
Landgraf, Tim
Ntoutsi, Eirini
author_facet Panagiotou, Emmanouil
Heurich, Manuel
Landgraf, Tim
Ntoutsi, Eirini
contents In the field of Explainable AI (XAI), counterfactual (CF) explanations are one prominent method to interpret a black-box model by suggesting changes to the input that would alter a prediction. In real-world applications, the input is predominantly in tabular form and comprised of mixed data types and complex feature interdependencies. These unique data characteristics are difficult to model, and we empirically show that they lead to bias towards specific feature types when generating CFs. To overcome this issue, we introduce TABCF, a CF explanation method that leverages a transformer-based Variational Autoencoder (VAE) tailored for modeling tabular data. Our approach uses transformers to learn a continuous latent space and a novel Gumbel-Softmax detokenizer that enables precise categorical reconstruction while preserving end-to-end differentiability. Extensive quantitative evaluation on five financial datasets demonstrates that TABCF does not exhibit bias toward specific feature types, and outperforms existing methods in producing effective CFs that align with common CF desiderata.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2410_10463
institution arXiv
publishDate 2024
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle TABCF: Counterfactual Explanations for Tabular Data Using a Transformer-Based VAE
Panagiotou, Emmanouil
Heurich, Manuel
Landgraf, Tim
Ntoutsi, Eirini
Machine Learning
Artificial Intelligence
Computers and Society
In the field of Explainable AI (XAI), counterfactual (CF) explanations are one prominent method to interpret a black-box model by suggesting changes to the input that would alter a prediction. In real-world applications, the input is predominantly in tabular form and comprised of mixed data types and complex feature interdependencies. These unique data characteristics are difficult to model, and we empirically show that they lead to bias towards specific feature types when generating CFs. To overcome this issue, we introduce TABCF, a CF explanation method that leverages a transformer-based Variational Autoencoder (VAE) tailored for modeling tabular data. Our approach uses transformers to learn a continuous latent space and a novel Gumbel-Softmax detokenizer that enables precise categorical reconstruction while preserving end-to-end differentiability. Extensive quantitative evaluation on five financial datasets demonstrates that TABCF does not exhibit bias toward specific feature types, and outperforms existing methods in producing effective CFs that align with common CF desiderata.
title TABCF: Counterfactual Explanations for Tabular Data Using a Transformer-Based VAE
topic Machine Learning
Artificial Intelligence
Computers and Society
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2410.10463