论文标题
因果解释和xai
Causal Explanations and XAI
论文作者
论文摘要
尽管标准的机器学习模型是为了预测观察结果的优化,但它们越来越多地用于对动作结果进行预测。可解释的人工智能(XAI)的一个重要目标是通过提供有关ML模型预测的解释来弥补这一不匹配的,这些预测确保它们可靠地引导了动作。正如动作引导解释是因果解释的那样,有关该主题的文献开始接受有关因果模型的文献的见解。在这里,我通过正式定义足够的解释和反事实解释的因果观念来沿着这条道路迈出一步。我展示了这些概念如何与现有工作相关联(并改善),并通过说明在不同情况下如何进行动作引导的方式来激发它们的充分性。此外,这项工作是第一个提供对实际因果关系的正式定义,该定义完全是在动作引导解释中建立的。尽管这些定义是由关注XAI的动机,但对因果解释和实际因果的分析通常适用。我还通过展示如何使用实际因果关系来改善路径特异性反事实公平的想法,从而探讨了这项工作对AI公平性的重要性。
Although standard Machine Learning models are optimized for making predictions about observations, more and more they are used for making predictions about the results of actions. An important goal of Explainable Artificial Intelligence (XAI) is to compensate for this mismatch by offering explanations about the predictions of an ML-model which ensure that they are reliably action-guiding. As action-guiding explanations are causal explanations, the literature on this topic is starting to embrace insights from the literature on causal models. Here I take a step further down this path by formally defining the causal notions of sufficient explanations and counterfactual explanations. I show how these notions relate to (and improve upon) existing work, and motivate their adequacy by illustrating how different explanations are action-guiding under different circumstances. Moreover, this work is the first to offer a formal definition of actual causation that is founded entirely in action-guiding explanations. Although the definitions are motivated by a focus on XAI, the analysis of causal explanation and actual causation applies in general. I also touch upon the significance of this work for fairness in AI by showing how actual causation can be used to improve the idea of path-specific counterfactual fairness.