arXiv Machine Learning

ProToMEx: Rapid, Interpretable Explanations via Structured Representations

ProToMEx is a new explainability framework that uses Probabilistic Topic Models to learn latent topics representing high‑level reasons behind a classifier’s decisions, moving beyond simple feature attribution. It provides both global and local explanations, revealing multiple co‑existing reasons for individual predictions. Empirical results show that ProToMEx achieves comparable fidelity to SHAP and LIME while being 30–40× faster on standard tabular and synthetic datasets.

arXiv AI
Oct 5

MEA: A Reward-Driven Multi-Agent System for Faithful Model Explanations

MEA is a multi‑agent framework that automates the selection and configuration of explanation tools for machine learning models across tabular, text, and vision data. A Proposer agent chooses appropriate tools based on the question and modality, while an Actor agent is trained end‑to‑end for faithfulness, producing natural‑language explanations. Experiments show that MEA outperforms existing post‑hoc explainers and closed‑source baselines, achieving significant faithfulness gains on six datasets.

By Yuyang Cheng, Raghav Kaushik Ravi, Srivarshinee Sridhar, Sriparna Saha, Akash Ghosh, Chirag Agarwal
arXiv AI
2d ago

Interpretable Feature Discovery from Unstructured Data Using LLMs and Statistical Choice Models

The paper proposes a method for discovering interpretable, decision‑relevant features from unstructured data by leveraging large language models (LLMs). It does so by conducting pairwise comparisons of items, asking an LLM to explain the distinguishing features, and then applying a statistical choice model to aggregate these explanations into feature relevance scores. Experiments on a synthetic hiring dataset and the Reddit ChangeMyView debate dataset demonstrate that the approach outperforms direct LLM feature extraction and matches baseline predictive accuracy while providing interpretable insights.

By Baptiste Arnaudo, Amine Bennouna, S\'ebastien Martin
arXiv Machine Learning
Sep 18

Evaluating Explanation Methods by the Predictors They Induce

The paper proposes a new evaluation test for explanation methods: if an explanation accurately captures how a model uses its features, one should be able to reconstruct the model’s predictions from it. The authors convert explanations into predictors by summing feature effects and assess how well these predictors reproduce the model on unseen data, without any fitting. They apply this test to partial dependence plots, accumulated local effects, SHAP, and LIME across multiple datasets and model families, showing that the best method depends on feature dependence and that some existing quality metrics can favor flawed explanations.

By Jacob Selb{\ae}k, Hugo L. Hammer