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Bibliographic Details
Main Author: Rabiza, Marcin
Format: Preprint
Published: 2024
Subjects:
Online Access:https://arxiv.org/abs/2411.01332
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author Rabiza, Marcin
author_facet Rabiza, Marcin
contents Despite significant advancements in XAI, scholars note a persistent lack of solid conceptual foundations and integration with broader scientific discourse on explanation. In response, emerging research draws on explanatory strategies from various sciences and the philosophy of science literature to fill these gaps. This paper outlines a mechanistic strategy for explaining the functional organization of deep learning systems, situating recent developments in explainable AI within a broader philosophical context. According to the mechanistic approach, the explanation of opaque AI systems involves identifying mechanisms that drive decision making. For deep neural networks, this means discerning functionally relevant components, such as neurons, layers, circuits, or activation patterns, and understanding their roles through decomposition, localization, and recomposition. Proof-of-principle case studies from image recognition and language modeling align these theoretical approaches with mechanistic interpretability research from OpenAI and Anthropic. The findings suggest that pursuing mechanistic explanations can uncover elements that traditional explainability techniques may overlook, ultimately contributing to more thoroughly explainable AI
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2411_01332
institution arXiv
publishDate 2024
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle A Mechanistic Explanatory Strategy for XAI
Rabiza, Marcin
Machine Learning
Artificial Intelligence
Despite significant advancements in XAI, scholars note a persistent lack of solid conceptual foundations and integration with broader scientific discourse on explanation. In response, emerging research draws on explanatory strategies from various sciences and the philosophy of science literature to fill these gaps. This paper outlines a mechanistic strategy for explaining the functional organization of deep learning systems, situating recent developments in explainable AI within a broader philosophical context. According to the mechanistic approach, the explanation of opaque AI systems involves identifying mechanisms that drive decision making. For deep neural networks, this means discerning functionally relevant components, such as neurons, layers, circuits, or activation patterns, and understanding their roles through decomposition, localization, and recomposition. Proof-of-principle case studies from image recognition and language modeling align these theoretical approaches with mechanistic interpretability research from OpenAI and Anthropic. The findings suggest that pursuing mechanistic explanations can uncover elements that traditional explainability techniques may overlook, ultimately contributing to more thoroughly explainable AI
title A Mechanistic Explanatory Strategy for XAI
topic Machine Learning
Artificial Intelligence
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2411.01332