arXiv Machine Learning

Generating Intervention Hypotheses using Explainable Explanations on Graphs: G2I, a Two-Stage Greedy Framework

arXiv Machine Learning
Sep 7

A Comparative Study of Counterfactual Explainers for Graph Neural Networks Enabling Multiple Types of Graph Edit

The paper presents a comparative analysis of six state‑of‑the‑art counterfactual explainers for graph neural networks, focusing on methods that can both add and remove edges to alter model predictions. It evaluates these explainers across diverse real‑world and synthetic datasets, covering binary and multi‑class graph and node classification tasks, using a range of quantitative and qualitative metrics. The study highlights the trade‑offs between explanation size, coverage, and quality, aiming to pinpoint each method’s strengths and weaknesses to inform future research.

By Maria Myrto Villia, Filippos Gouidis, Theodore Patkos, Panos Trahanias
arXiv Machine Learning
Aug 31

Can Subgraph Explanations Be Weaponized to Steal Graph Neural Networks?

Graph Machine Learning as a Service platforms now offer explainability interfaces to satisfy regulatory transparency, but this transparency can be exploited. The paper introduces a novel model extraction attack for graph classification that operates under strict black‑box constraints, using only discrete class labels and binary explanation masks. The method guides Monte Carlo edge sensitivity estimation toward decision boundaries with Hoeffding guarantees and narrows the search space using explanation subgraphs, outperforming comparable baselines on benchmark datasets.

By Ojas Nimase, Jiate Li, Yue Zhao, Yushun Dong
arXiv Machine Learning
Oct 19

RAW-Explainer: Post-hoc Explanations of Path Reasoning Graph Neural Networks for Knowledge Graph Completion

RAW-Explainer is a new explainability method designed for path reasoning graph neural networks used in knowledge graph completion. It produces connected, concise, and interpretable subgraph explanations for link prediction by leveraging heterogeneous information and a random walk objective. The approach also addresses distribution shift when evaluating small explanatory subgraphs with a robust evaluator, achieving a balance between explanation quality and computational efficiency on standard benchmarks.

By Ryoji Kubo, Samyam Lamichhane, Djellel Difallah
arXiv AI
Oct 12

Amortized Counterfactual Prediction with Graph Neural Networks

The paper introduces the Counterfactual Graph Neural Process (CFGNP), an end‑to‑end method that directly answers counterfactual queries from observational data without first estimating a causal graph. CFGNP employs Graph Neural Networks to leverage a dual‑graph structure, limiting cross‑world message passing to matched factual–counterfactual variables. Experiments on synthetic and image‑based datasets, including the German Loan benchmark, show that CFGNP outperforms existing methods, reducing mean‑squared error from $4.51 imes10^{-2}$ to $0.19 imes10^{-2}$, and generalizes from 10‑node to 30‑node graphs without retraining.

By Hendrik Stumpf, Francesco Quinzan
arXiv AI
Aug 17

Overcoming Shortcut Learning in Graph Neural Networks through Active Explanation Guidance

arXiv:2608. 14121v1 Announce Type: cross Abstract: Graph Neural Networks (GNNs) can solve prediction tasks by unintentionally exploiting shortcuts---that is, edges, nodes, and features that correlate with but are not causal for the prediction---which compromise their reliability in out-of-distribution tasks.

By Taraneh Younesian, Steve Azzolin, Antonio Longa, Francesco Ferrini, Vincenzo Marco De Luca, Stefano Teso