When Bits Break Recourse: Counterfactual-Faithful Quantization

Fuente: arXiv
Salvato in:
Dettagli Bibliografici
Autori principali: Yahyati, Chaymae, Lamaakal, Ismail, Makkaoui, Khalid El, Ouahbi, Ibrahim
Natura: Preprint
Pubblicazione: 2026
Soggetti:
Accesso online:
Tags: Aggiungi Tag
Nessun Tag, puoi essere il primo ad aggiungerne!!
_version_ 1866910228314849280
author Yahyati, Chaymae
Lamaakal, Ismail
Makkaoui, Khalid El
Ouahbi, Ibrahim
author_facet Yahyati, Chaymae
Lamaakal, Ismail
Makkaoui, Khalid El
Ouahbi, Ibrahim
contents Quantization can preserve predictive accuracy under low-bit deployment while silently breaking algorithmic recourse: an actionable change that flips a decision before quantization may fail after quantization, or become substantially more costly. We formalize counterfactual sensitivity under quantization through validity, cost, and direction stability, and introduce two metrics: Validity Drop (VD) and Counterfactual Recourse Gap (CRG) that reveal recourse failures invisible to accuracy. We propose Counterfactual-Faithful Quantization (CFQ), which trains quantizer parameters and mixed-precision bit allocation to preserve counterfactual behavior by enforcing the target outcome at teacher recourse points under a global bit budget. A margin-based analysis gives a sufficient condition for recourse transfer under bounded quantization perturbations. Experiments on Adult, German Credit, and COMPAS show that accuracy-matched baselines can significantly degrade recourse stability, while CFQ maintains accuracy and substantially improves VD and CRG across bit budgets.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2605_17160
institution arXiv
publishDate 2026
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle When Bits Break Recourse: Counterfactual-Faithful Quantization
Yahyati, Chaymae
Lamaakal, Ismail
Makkaoui, Khalid El
Ouahbi, Ibrahim
Machine Learning
Artificial Intelligence
Computer Vision and Pattern Recognition
Quantization can preserve predictive accuracy under low-bit deployment while silently breaking algorithmic recourse: an actionable change that flips a decision before quantization may fail after quantization, or become substantially more costly. We formalize counterfactual sensitivity under quantization through validity, cost, and direction stability, and introduce two metrics: Validity Drop (VD) and Counterfactual Recourse Gap (CRG) that reveal recourse failures invisible to accuracy. We propose Counterfactual-Faithful Quantization (CFQ), which trains quantizer parameters and mixed-precision bit allocation to preserve counterfactual behavior by enforcing the target outcome at teacher recourse points under a global bit budget. A margin-based analysis gives a sufficient condition for recourse transfer under bounded quantization perturbations. Experiments on Adult, German Credit, and COMPAS show that accuracy-matched baselines can significantly degrade recourse stability, while CFQ maintains accuracy and substantially improves VD and CRG across bit budgets.
title When Bits Break Recourse: Counterfactual-Faithful Quantization
topic Machine Learning
Artificial Intelligence
Computer Vision and Pattern Recognition
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2605.17160