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Learning Important Features Through Propagating Activation Differences

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arxiv 1704.02685 v2 pith:PL2DZP3Y submitted 2017-04-10 cs.CV cs.LGcs.NE

classification cs.CVcs.LGcs.NE
keywords deepliftactivationcontributionsfeatureshttpicmlimportantinput
verification ladder T0 review T1 audit T2 compute T3 formal
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The purported "black box" nature of neural networks is a barrier to adoption in applications where interpretability is essential. Here we present DeepLIFT (Deep Learning Important FeaTures), a method for decomposing the output prediction of a neural network on a specific input by backpropagating the contributions of all neurons in the network to every feature of the input. DeepLIFT compares the activation of each neuron to its 'reference activation' and assigns contribution scores according to the difference. By optionally giving separate consideration to positive and negative contributions, DeepLIFT can also reveal dependencies which are missed by other approaches. Scores can be computed efficiently in a single backward pass. We apply DeepLIFT to models trained on MNIST and simulated genomic data, and show significant advantages over gradient-based methods. Video tutorial: http://goo.gl/qKb7pL, ICML slides: bit.ly/deeplifticmlslides, ICML talk: https://vimeo.com/238275076, code: http://goo.gl/RM8jvH.

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Cited by 6 Pith papers

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