Approximating Score-based Explanation Techniques Using Conformal
  Regression
Amr Alkhatib Henrik Boström Sofiane Ennadir Ulf Johansson
Score-based explainable machine-learning techniques are often used to
understand the logic behind black-box models. However, such explanation
techniques are often computationally expensive, which limits their application
in time-critical contexts. Therefore, we propose and investigate the use of
computationally less costly regression models for approximating the output of
score-based explanation techniques, such as SHAP. Moreover, validity guarantees
for the approximated values are provided by the employed inductive conformal
prediction framework. We propose several non-conformity measures designed to
take the difficulty of approximating the explanations into account while
keeping the computational cost low. We present results from a large-scale
empirical investigation, in which the approximate explanations generated by our
proposed models are evaluated with respect to efficiency (interval size). The
results indicate that the proposed method can significantly improve execution
time compared to the fast version of SHAP, TreeSHAP. The results also suggest
that the proposed method can produce tight intervals, while providing validity
guarantees. Moreover, the proposed approach allows for comparing explanations
of different approximation methods and selecting a method based on how
informative (tight) are the predicted intervals.