用遗传算法生成用户行为的反事实解释,让推荐系统变透明。
Demystifying Sequential Recommendations: Counterfactual Explanations via Genetic Algorithms
- 设计专用遗传算法,针对离散序列生成最小改动建议。
- 在3个数据集和3个模型上验证,解释可信度接近1。
- 适合关注推荐系统可解释性的研究人员与工程师。
序列推荐系统(SRS)在捕捉用户动态偏好方面表现优异,但其作为“黑箱”模型的复杂性严重制约了可解释性。本文首次提出专为SRS设计的反事实解释方法,回答核心问题:用户行为历史做哪些最小修改,会带来不同推荐结果?为此,我们开发了一种针对离散序列的专用遗传算法,并证明生成序列反事实解释是NP-完全问题。在四类实验设置下(目标/非目标、分类/非分类),使用三个数据集和三个模型进行评估,结果表明该方法能有效生成可理解的反事实解释,同时保持模型保真度接近1。研究为可解释AI领域提供了一种通过“如果……会怎样”视角理解序列推荐决策的新框架,提升用户信任与系统透明度。
原文摘要 · Abstract (English)
Sequential Recommender Systems (SRSs) have demonstrated remarkable effectiveness in capturing users' evolving preferences. However, their inherent complexity as "black box" models poses significant challenges for explainability. This work presents the first counterfactual explanation technique specifically developed for SRSs, introducing a novel approach in this space, addressing the key question: What minimal changes in a user's interaction history would lead to different recommendations? To achieve this, we introduce a specialized genetic algorithm tailored for discrete sequences and show that generating counterfactual explanations for sequential data is an NP-Complete problem. We evaluate these approaches across four experimental settings, varying between targeted-untargeted and categorized-uncategorized scenarios, to comprehensively assess their capability in generating meaningful explanations. Using three different datasets and three models, we are able to demonstrate that our methods successfully generate interpretable counterfactual explanation while maintaining model fidelity close to one. Our findings contribute to the growing field of Explainable AI by providing a framework for understanding sequential recommendation decisions through the lens of "what-if" scenarios, ultimately enhancing user trust and system transparency.
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