从贝叶斯后验视角重看反事实解释,提供更稳健的决策与评估方法。
A Generalized-Bayes Perspective on Counterfactual Explanations: Posterior-Based Decision-Making and Evaluation

- 将反事实解释建模为广义贝叶斯下的后验估计,引入距离先验
- 提出贝叶斯决策与风险规避的CVaR-CE,提升决策鲁棒性
- 支持多模型混合,适用于模型不确定场景,适合可解释性研究者
反事实解释(CEs)通过寻找使模型输出改变的最小输入扰动来增强机器学习模型的可解释性。尽管传统上将CEs表述为距离最小化问题,但其理论基础尚不明确。本文证明:基于距离最小化的CE在广义贝叶斯框架下等价于使用距离型先验时的极大后验(MAP)估计,称为距离先验广义贝叶斯反事实解释(DP-GBCE)。在此后验视角基础上,我们提出两种超越MAP的统一决策规则:最小化期望损失的贝叶斯决策和风险厌恶的CVaR-CE。此外,我们还提出利用贝叶斯权重混合多个模型的后验分布,以处理模型多样性问题。最后,定义了评估单个反事实解释及整个后验分布的指标,并在模拟数据和Google Trends数据上实验,量化了不同决策规则间的权衡。
原文摘要 · Abstract (English)
Counterfactual explanations (CEs) enhance the interpretability of machine learning models by identifying the smallest change to an input required to obtain a desired output. Although CEs are conventionally formulated as a distance-minimization problem, the theoretical basis of this formulation has received limited attention. We show that a distance-minimization-based CE is mathematically equivalent to the maximum a posteriori (MAP) estimate of a Gibbs posterior within the generalized Bayes framework, specifically when a distance-based prior is used. We call this formulation the Distance-Prior Generalized Bayes CE (DP-GBCE). Building on this posterior perspective, we introduce two decision rules beyond MAP within a unified framework: a Bayes decision that minimizes expected decision loss and CVaR-CE, a risk-averse decision rule. We also propose an extension that uses Bayesian model weights to mix the posterior distributions of multiple models, thereby accounting for model multiplicity, where several models have comparable predictive performance. Finally, we define metrics for evaluating both individual CEs and the posterior distribution as a whole, and use experiments on simulated data and Google Trends data to quantify the trade-offs among the decision rules.
Thank you to arXiv for use of its open access interoperability. PaperDance 不是 arXiv 官方产品;中文卡片由大模型生成,请以原文为准。