arXiv:2602.10457cs.LG2026-02被引 1

通过生成反事实数据集,揭示模型预测受标签偏差影响的根源。

Analyzing Fairness of Neural Network Prediction via Counterfactual Dataset Generation

  • 不改输入,而是调整少量训练标签构造反事实数据集
  • 仅修改极少数标签即改变测试样本预测结果
  • 适合研究模型公平性与数据偏差影响的从业者

深度神经网络推理行为的解释仍是难题。现有反事实解释方法通常询问:如何微调输入以改变模型预测?本文提出反事实数据集视角:不扰动输入,而是高效寻找一个仅修改少数标签的替代训练数据集。在该数据集上重新训练模型后,可观察其对特定测试样本的预测是否改变。这一方法能直接分析标签偏差如何影响训练与推理过程。由于穷举所有可能数据集不可行,我们设计了启发式策略,限定范围地重标部分训练样本,再重训模型并检测预测变化。在7个主流公平性数据集上,针对超过1100个测试样本验证表明,只需修改极小比例训练标签即可引发预测改变,说明关键训练样本具有决定性作用。此外,反事实数据集揭示了训练样本与测试样本间的可解释关联,为探测数据偏差提供了新路径。

原文摘要 · Abstract (English)

Interpreting the inference-time behavior of deep neural networks remains a challenging problem. Existing approaches to counterfactual explanation typically ask: What is the closest alternative input that would alter the model's prediction in a desired way? In contrast, we explore counterfactual datasets. Rather than perturbing the input, our method efficiently finds the closest alternative training dataset, one that differs from the original dataset by changing a few labels. Training a new model on this altered dataset can then lead to a different prediction of a given test instance. This perspective provides a new way to assess fairness by directly analyzing the influence of label bias on training and inference. Our approach can be characterized as probing whether a given prediction depends on biased labels. Since exhaustively enumerating all possible alternate datasets is infeasible, we develop analysis techniques that trace how bias in the training data may propagate through the learning algorithm to the trained network. Our method heuristically ranks and modifies the labels of a bounded number of training examples to construct a counterfactual dataset, retrains the model, and checks whether its prediction on a chosen test case changes. We evaluate our approach on feedforward neural networks across over 1100 test cases from 7 widely-used fairness datasets. Results show that it modifies only a small subset of training labels, highlighting its ability to pinpoint the critical training examples that drive prediction changes. Finally, we demonstrate how our counterfactual datasets reveal connections between training examples and test cases, offering an interpretable way to probe dataset bias.

公平性分析反事实推理数据偏差模型解释

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