Interactive dense pixel visualizations for time series and model attribution explanations

The field of Explainable Artificial Intelligence (XAI) for Deep Neural Network models has developed significantly, offering numerous techniques to extract explanations from models. However, evaluating explanations is often not trivial, and differences in applied metrics can be subtle, especially with non-intelligible data. Thus, there is a need for visualizations tailored to explore explanations for domains with such data, e.g., time series. We propose DAVOTS, an interactive visual analytics approach to explore raw time series data, activations of neural networks, and attributions in a dense-pixel visualization to gain insights into the data, models' decisions, and explanations. To further support users in exploring large datasets, we apply clustering approaches to the visualized data domains to highlight groups and present ordering strategies for individual and combined data exploration to facilitate finding patterns. We visualize a CNN trained on the FordA dataset to demonstrate the approach.

Finding the DeepDream for Time Series: Activation Maximization for Univariate Time Series

Understanding how models process and interpret time series data remains a significant challenge in deep learning to enable applicability in safety-critical areas such as healthcare. In this paper, we introduce Sequence Dreaming, a technique that adapts Activation Maximization to analyze sequential information, aiming to enhance the interpretability of neural networks operating on univariate time series. By leveraging this method, we visualize the temporal dynamics and patterns most influential in model decision-making processes. To counteract the generation of unrealistic or excessively noisy sequences, we enhance Sequence Dreaming with a range of regularization techniques, including exponential smoothing. This approach ensures the production of sequences that more accurately reflect the critical features identified by the neural network. Our approach is tested on a time series classification dataset encompassing applications in predictive maintenance. The results show that our proposed Sequence Dreaming approach demonstrates targeted activation maximization for different use cases so that either centered class or border activation maximization can be generated. The results underscore the versatility of Sequence Dreaming in uncovering salient temporal features learned by neural networks, thereby advancing model transparency and trustworthiness in decision-critical domains.

Interactive Counterfactual Generation for Univariate Time Series

We propose an interactive methodology for generating counterfactual explanations for univariate time series data in classification tasks by leveraging 2D projections and decision boundary maps to tackle interpretability challenges. Our approach aims to enhance the transparency and understanding of deep learning models' decision processes. The application simplifies the time series data analysis by enabling users to interactively manipulate projected data points, providing intuitive insights through inverse projection techniques. By abstracting user interactions with the projected data points rather than the raw time series data, our method facilitates an intuitive generation of counterfactual explanations. This approach allows for a more straightforward exploration of univariate time series data, enabling users to manipulate data points to comprehend potential outcomes of hypothetical scenarios. We validate this method using the ECG5000 benchmark dataset, demonstrating significant improvements in interpretability and user understanding of time series classification. The results indicate a promising direction for enhancing explainable AI, with potential applications in various domains requiring transparent and interpretable deep learning models. Future work will explore the scalability of this method to multivariate time series data and its integration with other interpretability techniques.

Cutting Through the Clutter: The Potential of LLMs for Efficient Filtration in Systematic Literature Reviews

In academic research, systematic literature reviews are foundational and highly relevant, yet tedious to create due to the high volume of publications and labor-intensive processes involved. Systematic selection of relevant papers through conventional means like keyword-based filtering techniques can sometimes be inadequate, plagued by semantic ambiguities and inconsistent terminology, which can lead to sub-optimal outcomes. To mitigate the required extensive manual filtering, we explore and evaluate the potential of using Large Language Models (LLMs) to enhance the efficiency, speed, and precision of literature review filtering, reducing the amount of manual screening required. By using models as classification agents acting on a structured database only, we prevent common problems inherent in LLMs, such as hallucinations. We evaluate the real-world performance of such a setup during the construction of a recent literature survey paper with initially more than 8.3k potentially relevant articles under consideration and compare this with human performance on the same dataset. Our findings indicate that employing advanced LLMs like GPT-4o, Claude 3.5 Sonnet, Gemini 1.5 Flash, or Llama3 with simple prompting can significantly reduce the time required for literature filtering - from usually weeks of manual research to only a few minutes. Simultaneously, we crucially show that false negatives can indeed be controlled through a consensus scheme, achieving recalls >98.8% at or even beyond the typical human error threshold, thereby also providing for more accurate and relevant articles selected. Our research not only demonstrates a substantial improvement in the methodology of literature reviews but also sets the stage for further integration and extensive future applications of responsible AI in academic research practices.

generAItor: Tree-in-the-Loop Text Generation for Language Model Explainability and Adaptation

Large language models (LLMs) are widely deployed in various downstream tasks, e.g., auto-completion, aided writing, or chat-based text generation. However, the considered output candidates of the underlying search algorithm are under-explored and under-explained. We tackle this shortcoming by proposing a tree-in-the-loop approach, where a visual representation of the beam search tree is the central component for analyzing, explaining, and adapting the generated outputs. To support these tasks, we present generAItor, a visual analytics technique, augmenting the central beam search tree with various task-specific widgets, providing targeted visualizations and interaction possibilities. Our approach allows interactions on multiple levels and offers an iterative pipeline that encompasses generating, exploring, and comparing output candidates, as well as fine-tuning the model based on adapted data. Our case study shows that our tool generates new insights in gender bias analysis beyond state-of-the-art template-based methods. Additionally, we demonstrate the applicability of our approach in a qualitative user study. Finally, we quantitatively evaluate the adaptability of the model to few samples, as occurring in text-generation use cases.

Revealing the Unwritten: Visual Investigation of Beam Search Trees to Address Language Model Prompting Challenges

The growing popularity of generative language models has amplified interest in interactive methods to guide model outputs. Prompt refinement is considered one of the most effective means to influence output among these methods. We identify several challenges associated with prompting large language models, categorized into data- and model-specific, linguistic, and socio-linguistic challenges. A comprehensive examination of model outputs, including runner-up candidates and their corresponding probabilities, is needed to address these issues. The beam search tree, the prevalent algorithm to sample model outputs, can inherently supply this information. Consequently, we introduce an interactive visual method for investigating the beam search tree, facilitating analysis of the decisions made by the model during generation. We quantitatively show the value of exposing the beam search tree and present five detailed analysis scenarios addressing the identified challenges. Our methodology validates existing results and offers additional insights.

Introducing the Attribution Stability Indicator: a Measure for Time Series XAI Attributions

Given the increasing amount and general complexity of time series data in domains such as finance, weather forecasting, and healthcare, there is a growing need for state-of-the-art performance models that can provide interpretable insights into underlying patterns and relationships. Attribution techniques enable the extraction of explanations from time series models to gain insights but are hard to evaluate for their robustness and trustworthiness. We propose the Attribution Stability Indicator (ASI), a measure to incorporate robustness and trustworthiness as properties of attribution techniques for time series into account. We extend a perturbation analysis with correlations of the original time series to the perturbed instance and the attributions to include wanted properties in the measure. We demonstrate the wanted properties based on an analysis of the attributions in a dimension-reduced space and the ASI scores distribution over three whole time series classification datasets.

Visual Explanations with Attributions and Counterfactuals on Time Series Classification

With the rising necessity of explainable artificial intelligence (XAI), we see an increase in task-dependent XAI methods on varying abstraction levels. XAI techniques on a global level explain model behavior and on a local level explain sample predictions. We propose a visual analytics workflow to support seamless transitions between global and local explanations, focusing on attributions and counterfactuals on time series classification. In particular, we adapt local XAI techniques (attributions) that are developed for traditional datasets (images, text) to analyze time series classification, a data type that is typically less intelligible to humans. To generate a global overview, we apply local attribution methods to the data, creating explanations for the whole dataset. These explanations are projected onto two dimensions, depicting model behavior trends, strategies, and decision boundaries. To further inspect the model decision-making as well as potential data errors, a what-if analysis facilitates hypothesis generation and verification on both the global and local levels. We constantly collected and incorporated expert user feedback, as well as insights based on their domain knowledge, resulting in a tailored analysis workflow and system that tightly integrates time series transformations into explanations. Lastly, we present three use cases, verifying that our technique enables users to (1)~explore data transformations and feature relevance, (2)~identify model behavior and decision boundaries, as well as, (3)~the reason for misclassifications.

A Deep Dive into Perturbations as Evaluation Technique for Time Series XAI

Explainable Artificial Intelligence (XAI) has gained significant attention recently as the demand for transparency and interpretability of machine learning models has increased. In particular, XAI for time series data has become increasingly important in finance, healthcare, and climate science. However, evaluating the quality of explanations, such as attributions provided by XAI techniques, remains challenging. This paper provides an in-depth analysis of using perturbations to evaluate attributions extracted from time series models. A perturbation analysis involves systematically modifying the input data and evaluating the impact on the attributions generated by the XAI method. We apply this approach to several state-of-the-art XAI techniques and evaluate their performance on three time series classification datasets. Our results demonstrate that the perturbation analysis approach can effectively evaluate the quality of attributions and provide insights into the strengths and limitations of XAI techniques. Such an approach can guide the selection of XAI methods for time series data, e.g., focusing on return time rather than precision, and facilitate the development of more reliable and interpretable machine learning models for time series analysis.

How to Enable Uncertainty Estimation in Proximal Policy Optimization

While deep reinforcement learning (RL) agents have showcased strong results across many domains, a major concern is their inherent opaqueness and the safety of such systems in real-world use cases. To overcome these issues, we need agents that can quantify their uncertainty and detect out-of-distribution (OOD) states. Existing uncertainty estimation techniques, like Monte-Carlo Dropout or Deep Ensembles, have not seen widespread adoption in on-policy deep RL. We posit that this is due to two reasons: concepts like uncertainty and OOD states are not well defined compared to supervised learning, especially for on-policy RL methods. Secondly, available implementations and comparative studies for uncertainty estimation methods in RL have been limited. To overcome the first gap, we propose definitions of uncertainty and OOD for Actor-Critic RL algorithms, namely, proximal policy optimization (PPO), and present possible applicable measures. In particular, we discuss the concepts of value and policy uncertainty. The second point is addressed by implementing different uncertainty estimation methods and comparing them across a number of environments. The OOD detection performance is evaluated via a custom evaluation benchmark of in-distribution (ID) and OOD states for various RL environments. We identify a trade-off between reward and OOD detection performance. To overcome this, we formulate a Pareto optimization problem in which we simultaneously optimize for reward and OOD detection performance. We show experimentally that the recently proposed method of Masksembles strikes a favourable balance among the survey methods, enabling high-quality uncertainty estimation and OOD detection while matching the performance of original RL agents.