arXiv:2605. 27618v2 Announce Type: replace Abstract: Despite the wide use of explainability techniques to attempt to understand the behavior of Artificial Intelligence (AI), the generated explanations may not always be reliable.
By Tom\'as Pereira, Jo\~ao Vitorino, Eva Maia, Isabel Pra\c{c}a
The paper introduces a straightforward evaluation method for explanation techniques: by converting each explanation into a predictor that sums the feature effects, the authors assess how accurately this predictor reproduces the original model’s predictions on unseen data. This approach applies to any explanation expressible as a function of features and is demonstrated on PDP, ALE, SHAP, and LIME. The authors theoretically show that summing partial dependence curves yields the optimal additive summary when features are independent, but this property fails with dependent features, and empirical results across diverse datasets confirm that the best-performing method depends on feature dependence.
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
arXiv:2607. 14315v1 Announce Type: cross Abstract: In this paper, we present a comprehensive framework for assessing the explainability of various XAI methods, such as LIME and SHAP, across multiple datasets and machine learning models, with the ultimate goal of creating a unified multidimensional explainability score.
By Georgios Makridis, Georgios Fatouros, Athanasios Kiourtis, Dimitrios Kotios, Vasileios Koukos, Dimosthenis Kyriazis, Jonh Soldatos
The paper introduces a synthetic ground‑truth framework for evaluating explainable AI (XAI) methods, addressing the lack of reliable evaluation procedures. By using controlled interventions to create datasets where the importance of input components is known, the framework generates ground‑truth explanations that align with the model’s actual decision process. The authors apply this approach to binary images, tabular data, and time series, and find that nine popular XAI methods exhibit significant limitations, underscoring the need for intervention‑based benchmarks.
By Miquel Mir\'o-Nicolau, Francesco Spinnato, Riccardo Guidotti
arXiv:2607. 22045v1 Announce Type: new Abstract: Counterfactual explanations are a prominent approach in explainable artificial intelligence (xAI), providing actionable guidance on what input changes would alter a model's prediction to a desired outcome.
By Oleksii Furman, {\L}ukasz Lenkiewicz, Marcel Musia{\l}ek, Maciej Zi\k{e}ba