Attributing a deep network’s prediction to its input features
By MUKUND SUNDARARAJAN, ANKUR TALY, QIQI YAN Editor's note: Causal inference is central to answering questions in science, engineering and business and hence the topic has received particular attention on this blog. Typically, causal inference in data science is framed in probabilistic terms, where there is statistical uncertainty in the outcomes as well as model uncertainty about the true causal mechanism connecting inputs and outputs. And yet even when the relationship between inputs and outputs is fully known and entirely deterministic, causal inference is far from obvious for a complex system. In this post, we explore causal inference in this setting via the problem of attribution in deep networks. This investigation has practical as well as philosophical implications for causal inference. On the other hand, if you just care about understanding what a deep network is doing, this post is for you too. Deep networks have had remarkable success in variety of tasks. For inst