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Why are we using black box models in AI when we don’t need to? (2019)

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Re: Why are we using black box models in AI when we don’t need to? (2019)

#131
post #99

I am worried about the recent trend of "ethical AI", "interpretable models" etc. IMO it attracts people that can't come with SOTA advances in real problems and its their "easier, vague target" to hit and finish their PhDs while getting published in top journals. Those same people will likely at some point call for a strict regulation of AI using their underwhelming models to keep their advantage, faking results of th…

> IMO it attracts people that can't come with SOTA advances in real problems and its their "easier, vague target" to hit and finish their PhDs while getting published in top journals. I'm also pretty wary of interpretability/explainability research in AI. Work on robustness and safety tends to be a bit better (those communities at least mathematically characterize their goals and contributions, and propose reasonable…

> If I had a penny for every dissertation in the past few years that boiled down to...

This is very, very accurate. On the other hand, I oftentimes see field-specific papers from field experts with little ML experience using very basic and unnecessary ML techniques, which are then blown out of the water when serious DL researchers give the problem a shot.

One field that comes to mind where I have really noticed this problem is genomics.

Re: Why are we using black box models in AI when we don’t need to? (2019)

#132

I think it's important to note that human pattern recognition is basically black-box as well. We can't "explain" how we recognize a particular person's face, for example. Robust pattern recognition based on 100+'s of factors is just inherently black box. Even when people make decisions, they're generally a weighted combination of a bunch of "feelings". We attempt to explain a kind of simple, logical rationalization a…

>how do we ensure machine learning is trained and verified in ways that don't encode bias

Or, more commonly, people work to ensure their machine learning is trained and limited to not specifically notice any patterns of fact that would be politically unacceptable to notice and make use of, even if it was rational and useful for the task at hand.

The status quo moral system of our society rests on a collection of objectively false beliefs about the physical world. Most humans know enough to avoid noticing these facts because of the social cost and possible societal negative impacts of shaking those moral foundations. It's not even necessarily wrong, since agreed-upon lies can do a lot to reduce conflict and cruelty. But machines need to be specifically trained to not notice these facts. You need to teach the machine not to notice the emperor's nudity.

And what's even better is that this'll never get acknowledged in the literature. It's one of those self-hiding facts which exists if you're willing to notice it yourself, but which no authority will ever tell you (I love these, wish there was a word for them).

Re: Why are we using black box models in AI when we don’t need to? (2019)

#133

I think it's important to note that human pattern recognition is basically black-box as well. We can't "explain" how we recognize a particular person's face, for example. Robust pattern recognition based on 100+'s of factors is just inherently black box. Even when people make decisions, they're generally a weighted combination of a bunch of "feelings". We attempt to explain a kind of simple, logical rationalization a…

This is an incredibly salient point. Others have also pointed out that there are numerous applications in which black box models appear to offer significantly greater accuracy than interpretable models, bolstering the notion that this article is a bit overstated.

However, in this article and elsewhere Professor Rudin has cited compelling evidence of cases in which black box models have been demonstrated to be no more accurate than interpretable alternatives. I feel this fairly justifies the question in the title of the article. For example, based upon available evidence, it appears reasonable that some onus should lie on the creators and buyers of COMPAS (a proprietary black box recidivism model) to demonstrate COMPAS actually is more accurate than an interpretable baseline. While it may not be the case, as the article seems to suggest, that in all modeling cases there is an interpretable alternative with comparable accuracy, in cases which there is, there doesn't seem to be any justification for using a black box model.

On the matter of "human-style" interpretability, we are brought to the difference between "interpretability" and "explainability." Humans have a complex capacity for constructing explanations for the thoughts and actions of ourselves and others (among other things). As OP points out, a lot of famous psychological experiments by Kahneman and others have shown how much of our reasoning appears to be post-hoc, often biased, and often inaccurate (in other words, human explanations are not actually true transparent interpretations of our thoughts and actions). However, we humans do have a powerful capacity to evaluate and challenge the explanations presented by others, and we are able to reject bad explanations. For those interested, a great book on this topic is "The Enigma of Reason" by Mercier and Sperber (https://www.hup.harvard.edu/catalog.php?isbn=9780674237827), but the gist here is that we must understand that while explanations are not the same as transparent interpretability, they are still useful.

I would conjecture that at some level of complexity (which some predictive tasks like pixel-to-label image recognition seem to exhibit), true end-to-end interpretability is not possible -- the best we can do is to construct an explanation. However, two very important points should be observed when considering this conjecture: 1. (Professor Rudin's point in the article) In cases which are not too complex for interpretable models to achieve comparable accuracy to black-box models, we can and should use them, as they offer super-human transparency at no cost in accuracy. 2. Constructing no explanations (or bad explanations) is not the same as reaching the same level of semi-transparency that humans offer. If we want to use human interpretability as a benchmark, black box models with no explanations are not up to par.

Re: Why are we using black box models in AI when we don’t need to? (2019)

#134

I think it's important to note that human pattern recognition is basically black-box as well. We can't "explain" how we recognize a particular person's face, for example. Robust pattern recognition based on 100+'s of factors is just inherently black box. Even when people make decisions, they're generally a weighted combination of a bunch of "feelings". We attempt to explain a kind of simple, logical rationalization a…

Yes, that’s true. But human decisions have accountability - algorithms don’t have accountability. If entities who deploy algorithms would be legally required to take accountability for algorithmic decisions, there would be no issue with black box algorithms.

I agree in spirit, but a lot of human behaviors, derived from decisions, don’t have consequences. Did Nestle face consequences for their decisions to promote formula, etc?

Re: Why are we using black box models in AI when we don’t need to? (2019)

#135
Interpretable models are an exciting new entry to the ML toolkit. While they are likely sufficient for everyday ML tasks, they might not be expressive enough vs deep networks to tackle complex tasks like fraud and anti-money laundering classification. As with any tool, interpretable vs black models have optimal target applications that data scientist can apply them for. As interpretable models get wider tooling for training, expect them to play a larger role in simpler ML tasks. Black box models are however here to stay and will always have their place with their versatility.

Re: Why are we using black box models in AI when we don’t need to? (2019)

#136

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, that’s true. But human decisions have accountability - algorithms don’t have accountability. If entities who deploy algorithms would be legally required to take accountability for algorithmic decisions, there would be no issue with black box algorithms.

I agree in spirit, but a lot of human behaviors, derived from decisions, don’t have consequences. Did Nestle face consequences for their decisions to promote formula, etc?

Let's not confuse accountability of decision making entity with consequences faced by the accountability. I was referring to the former, not the latter. The former is a case for law, the latter is a subject of law enforcement. In the case of Nestlé, you have a clear assigned accountable entity. We don't have that with algorithmic decision making (yet) where organizations wash off their hands saying "Oops! It was an algorithm, we didn't do anything!" Weak law enforcement is not a reason to not have proper laws in place.

Re: Why are we using black box models in AI when we don’t need to? (2019)

#137

I think it's important to note that human pattern recognition is basically black-box as well. We can't "explain" how we recognize a particular person's face, for example. Robust pattern recognition based on 100+'s of factors is just inherently black box. Even when people make decisions, they're generally a weighted combination of a bunch of "feelings". We attempt to explain a kind of simple, logical rationalization a…

>how do we ensure machine learning is trained and verified in ways that don't encode bias Or, more commonly, people work to ensure their machine learning is trained and limited to not specifically notice any patterns of fact that would be politically unacceptable to notice and make use of, even if it was rational and useful for the task at hand. The status quo moral system of our society rests on a collection of obje…

If we were able to provide perfect datasets you would be correct. As it is our datasets are imperfect and ML models are only as good as the training data.

Re: Why are we using black box models in AI when we don’t need to? (2019)

#138

Interpretability is probably one of the most misunderstood topics in AI. Interpretability is fundamentally not a math or statistics challenge, it's a Human Computer Interaction (HCI) problem and needs to be studied in a similar manner, with user studies. The fundemental goal of interpretability is to help users achieve some concrete goal such as detecting bias, identifying bad models, and debugging. This is similar h…

> nterpretability is fundamentally not a math or statistics challenge

No, I keep on seeing AI/ML/DS people keep on downplaying statistic.

Statistic interpret things. The majority of the models out there have a one to one, predictor to response, holding all other predictor constant (linear regression, logistic regression, arima, anova, etc..). Statistic inference is a thing. Inference is interpreting. Descriptive statistic is interpreting. Parsimonious is a thing. Experimental design is a thing. Degree of freedom is a thing in statistic.

If you want interpretability do statistic. One of it's tenant is to quantify and live with uncertainty not fitting a curve and lots of coefficient to just predict. Not just classification.

It's a reason why biostat or econometric is a thing. Statistic.

Even the blog cited statistic papers even though it barely mention statistic models in it. ~~And Rudin is a statistician and contributed a lot in statistic.~~ Wrong person (I'm thinking of Rubin for casuality and missingness)

This is not a tribal fight between statistic and ML. This is pointing out that ignoring statistic is a detriment to AI/ML/DS as a field.

I predict that 2020 to 2030 statistic will be coming to AI/ML much more so regardless how much people downplay statistic.

~~Seeing on Dr. Rudin is coming over.~~ I've seen other statistician too. Dr. Loh works took decision tree and added ANOVA and Chisqaure to build parsimonious decision tree.

Re: Why are we using black box models in AI when we don’t need to? (2019)

#139

I think it's important to note that human pattern recognition is basically black-box as well. We can't "explain" how we recognize a particular person's face, for example. Robust pattern recognition based on 100+'s of factors is just inherently black box. Even when people make decisions, they're generally a weighted combination of a bunch of "feelings". We attempt to explain a kind of simple, logical rationalization a…

Black boxness isn't a property of the thing, it's a property of our understanding of the thing. Just because we don't understand the how pattern recognition in humans works, doesn't mean the process has no internal structure, or that we couldn't potentially understand it in the future.

Re: Why are we using black box models in AI when we don’t need to? (2019)

#140
post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Their model didn't win. IBM's model won, based on actual metrics around useful insights.

The IBM team got $5,000 and the second place/honorable mention NYU got $2,000. So going by prize amounts, the Duke model was still pretty good. IBM turned the model/paper into a toolkit: https://www.ibm.com/blogs/research/2019/08/ai-explainability... Their model seems to be a variant of decision trees that has a knob controlling how complicated the trees are. And the evaluation was completely subjective, so there's n…

> And the evaluation was completely subjective, so there's not any meaning to the Duke people losing besides that the judges didn't like them.

That's what you get if you use a black box for judging :-)

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