ICON Decomposition is a new method for explaining deep neural networks by quantifying how much variance each concept explains in a network layer after accounting for all other concepts and the outcome. Unlike previous concept‑based methods that evaluate concepts in isolation, ICON can distinguish genuine model reliance from spurious correlations. Experiments on synthetic data, skin‑lesion, and brain‑imaging models show that ICON recovers concept importance more accurately, isolates truly relied‑upon concepts, and provides sparse explanations validated through retraining and out‑of‑distribution testing.
By Roshan Prakash Rane, Marco Simnacher, Manuel Pfeuffer, Marc-Andre Schulz, Nys Tjade Siegel, Maximilian Dreyer, Frederik Pahde, Wojciech Samek, Sonja Greven, Kerstin Ritter
The paper introduces ICON Decomposition, a method for auditing deep neural networks by decomposing layer-wise representations into independent concept contributions. Unlike existing techniques that rely on linear probes or concept activation vectors, ICON quantifies the variance share each concept explains while conditioning on all other concepts and the outcome, allowing comparison across layers and concept types. Experiments on simulated data, skin‑cancer, and neuroimaging models show that ICON more accurately recovers true concept importance and can distinguish learned shortcuts from correlated concepts, as validated by retraining and out‑of‑distribution tests.
By Roshan Prakash Rane, Marco Simnacher, Manuel Pfeuffer, Marc-Andre Schulz, Nys Tjade Siegel, Maximilian Dreyer, Frederik Pahde, Wojciech Samek, Sonja Greven, Kerstin Ritter
arXiv:2607. 29614v1 Announce Type: cross Abstract: The rapid adoption of deep learning models in high-risk domains has intensified the need for trustworthy Explainable Artificial Intelligence (XAI).
By Christian Oliva, Luis F. Lago-Fern\'andez
arXiv:2411. 05698v3 Announce Type: replace-cross Abstract: Convolutional Neural Networks (CNNs) have shown remarkable performance in image classification.
By Antonio De Santis, Riccardo Campi, Matteo Bianchi, Marco Brambilla
arXiv:2607. 09649v1 Announce Type: new Abstract: Concept-based explainable artificial intelligence (AI) can make model reasoning more human-understandable, but concept-level outputs are not automatically trustworthy.
By Mohadeseh Mollapour, Koorosh Aslansefat, Zeinab Dehghani, Bhupesh Kumar Mishra, Tejal Shah, Zhibao Mian
arXiv:2609.07803v1 Announce Type: new
Abstract: Model pruning is widely used to compress deep neural networks, reducing memory and computational requirements with minimal impact on aggregate performa...
By Nazish Khalid, Tausifa Jan Saleem, Amal Saqib, Donald C. Wunsch II, Mohammad Yaqub
arXiv:2609.09909v1 Announce Type: new
Abstract: Although text-to-image diffusion models generally exhibit strong prompt-following ability, we identify a persistent and previously underexplored failur...
By Yifan Yuan, Xiangyu Liu, Hongming Shan, Yu Han, Yu Jiang, Hao Tan, Junping Zhang, Linlin Shen
arXiv:2403. 06013v2 Announce Type: replace Abstract: This paper delves into the critical area of deep learning robustness, challenging the conventional belief that classification robustness and explanation robustness in image classification systems are inherently correlated.
By Tiejin Chen, Wenwang Huang, Linsey Pang, Dongsheng Luo, Hua Wei
The paper introduces SMILE, a self‑explainable multimodal information bottleneck framework for medical diagnosis. It jointly optimizes predictive accuracy and modality‑specific explainability by selecting the most informative elements within each data modality. Experiments on diverse medical datasets show strong diagnostic performance, including a 9.1‑percentage‑point accuracy gain on the iCTCF dataset, and provide transparent, modality‑aware explanations that enhance both explainability and generalization.
By Yuqing Yang, Alexander Schmatz, Zhaozhao Ma, Changkyu Choi, Robert Jenssen, Shujian Yu
arXiv:2608. 12299v1 Announce Type: cross Abstract: Class activation mapping (CAM) is one of the most widely used visual explanation families in explainable artificial intelligence.
By AmirHossein Eshghi, Hamid Saadatfar, Seyyed Ali Hoseini, AmirMohsen Eshghi, Siavash Arjomand Bigdel
arXiv:2608. 15731v1 Announce Type: cross Abstract: Deep Neural Networks (DNNs) deployed in high-risk domains, such as healthcare and autonomous driving, must be not only accurate but also understandable to ensure user trust.
By Haadia Amjad, Ronald Tetzlaff
arXiv:2602.01718v2 Announce Type: replace
Abstract: Predicting generalization from quantities available before target-test evaluation remains a central challenge in deep learning. The systematic benc...
By Sora Nakai, Youssef Fadhloun, Kacem Mathlouthi, Kotaro Yoshida, Ganesh Talluri, Ioannis Mitliagkas, Hiroki Naganuma