Newfluence: Boosting Model interpretability and Understanding in High Dimensions

Fuente: arXiv
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Autores principales: Zou, Haolin, Auddy, Arnab, Kwon, Yongchan, Rad, Kamiar Rahnama, Maleki, Arian
Formato: Preprint
Publicado: 2025
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author Zou, Haolin
Auddy, Arnab
Kwon, Yongchan
Rad, Kamiar Rahnama
Maleki, Arian
author_facet Zou, Haolin
Auddy, Arnab
Kwon, Yongchan
Rad, Kamiar Rahnama
Maleki, Arian
contents The increasing complexity of machine learning (ML) and artificial intelligence (AI) models has created a pressing need for tools that help scientists, engineers, and policymakers interpret and refine model decisions and predictions. Influence functions, originating from robust statistics, have emerged as a popular approach for this purpose. However, the heuristic foundations of influence functions rely on low-dimensional assumptions where the number of parameters $p$ is much smaller than the number of observations $n$. In contrast, modern AI models often operate in high-dimensional regimes with large $p$, challenging these assumptions. In this paper, we examine the accuracy of influence functions in high-dimensional settings. Our theoretical and empirical analyses reveal that influence functions cannot reliably fulfill their intended purpose. We then introduce an alternative approximation, called Newfluence, that maintains similar computational efficiency while offering significantly improved accuracy. Newfluence is expected to provide more accurate insights than many existing methods for interpreting complex AI models and diagnosing their issues. Moreover, the high-dimensional framework we develop in this paper can also be applied to analyze other popular techniques, such as Shapley values.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2507_11895
institution arXiv
publishDate 2025
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle Newfluence: Boosting Model interpretability and Understanding in High Dimensions
Zou, Haolin
Auddy, Arnab
Kwon, Yongchan
Rad, Kamiar Rahnama
Maleki, Arian
Machine Learning
Methodology
The increasing complexity of machine learning (ML) and artificial intelligence (AI) models has created a pressing need for tools that help scientists, engineers, and policymakers interpret and refine model decisions and predictions. Influence functions, originating from robust statistics, have emerged as a popular approach for this purpose. However, the heuristic foundations of influence functions rely on low-dimensional assumptions where the number of parameters $p$ is much smaller than the number of observations $n$. In contrast, modern AI models often operate in high-dimensional regimes with large $p$, challenging these assumptions. In this paper, we examine the accuracy of influence functions in high-dimensional settings. Our theoretical and empirical analyses reveal that influence functions cannot reliably fulfill their intended purpose. We then introduce an alternative approximation, called Newfluence, that maintains similar computational efficiency while offering significantly improved accuracy. Newfluence is expected to provide more accurate insights than many existing methods for interpreting complex AI models and diagnosing their issues. Moreover, the high-dimensional framework we develop in this paper can also be applied to analyze other popular techniques, such as Shapley values.
title Newfluence: Boosting Model interpretability and Understanding in High Dimensions
topic Machine Learning
Methodology
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2507.11895