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arXiv AI

Prediction certification cannot replace explanation certification: a competence envelope for trustworthy AI under compound stress

The paper argues that prediction‑based certifications—such as accuracy, calibration, and conformal coverage—are insufficient to guarantee trustworthy AI. It proves a separation theorem showing that a model can appear reliable under all prediction‑side certificates yet differ arbitrarily in explanation fidelity and deployment behaviour. The authors propose a competence envelope framework that combines both prediction and explanation certification to detect such hidden failures.

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arXiv AI
Aug 26

A Formal Methodological Framework for Auditing Robustness and Fidelity in Explainable AI: From Application to Trust Certification

The paper introduces a formal auditing framework to evaluate the robustness and fidelity of post‑hoc explainers such as SHAP and LIME. It defines a Trust Score that combines how stable an explanation is under small input perturbations with how well the highlighted features actually influence the model’s prediction. Experiments on a Madagascar malnutrition dataset show that even highly accurate models can produce unreliable explanations, and that fidelity scores degrade when models overfit.

By Rosa Elysabeth Ralinirina, Jean Christian Ralaivao, Niaiko Micha\"el Ralaivao, Alain Josu\'e Ratovondrahona, Thomas Mahatody
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arXiv Machine Learning
Sep 11

A distribution-free certification framework for trustworthy crash-severity prediction

The paper introduces a distribution‑free certification layer that can be applied to any crash‑severity prediction model without modifying the model itself. It provides guarantees for ordinal outcomes, per‑class validity, transfer of coverage to unobserved severities, and one‑sided certificates under deployment shift, all grounded in a functional of the true data law. The framework is evaluated on 5.2 million Texas records, demonstrating a model‑independent lower bound on set width for vulnerable road users and is released as an open‑source package with theorem‑level tests.

By Amir Rafe, Subasish Das
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arXiv Machine Learning
Sep 11

CertDW: Towards Certified Dataset Ownership Verification via Conformal Calibration

The paper introduces CertDW, a certified dataset watermark and ownership verification method that remains reliable even under malicious perturbations. By leveraging conformal prediction, it defines two statistical measures—principal probability (PP) and watermark robustness (WR)—to evaluate model stability on benign versus watermarked samples. The authors derive certification conditions linking WR to a PP-based threshold and provide a high‑probability bound on false positives, enabling robust ownership verification when a suspicious model’s WR exceeds the PP values of benign models.

By Ting Qiao, Yiming Li, Jianbin Li, Yingjia Wang, Leyi Qi, Junfeng Guo, Ruili Feng, Dacheng Tao
benchmarks
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arXiv Machine Learning
Aug 31

Explainable Uncertainty Estimation for Reliable Medical AI

The paper introduces egRUE, an explainable uncertainty estimation method that merges uncertainty quantification with feature‑level explanations for medical AI predictions. egRUE incorporates prediction explanations into its uncertainty calculation and decomposes uncertainty into contributions from individual features. Experiments and a user study with medical experts show that egRUE improves reliability, interpretability, and calibrated trust compared to existing methods.

By Li Rong Wang, Jamie Duell, Xinran Xu, Thomas C. Henderson, Yu Yue Hew, Pik Wan Erica Chiang, Xiao Wei Alstar Ang, Bingwen Eugene Fan, Xiuyi Fan
safety
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arXiv Machine Learning
Jul 27

Certified in Theory, Broken in Practice: Assumption Gaps in Cryptographic Model Certification

arXiv:2607. 21839v1 Announce Type: cross Abstract: Privacy-preserving machine learning auditing protocols allow auditors to assess models for properties such as accuracy or fairness, without revealing their internals or training data.

By Carter Luck, Olive Franzese-McLaughlin, Elisaweta Masserova, Akira Takahashi, Antigoni Polychroniadou, Nicolas Papernot
safety
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