Explainable AI using expressive Boolean formulas
Gili Rosenberg J. Kyle Brubaker Martin J. A. Schuetz Grant Salton Zhihuai Zhu Elton Yechao Zhu Serdar Kadıoğlu Sima E. Borujeni Helmut G. Katzgraber
We propose and implement an interpretable machine learning classification
model for Explainable AI (XAI) based on expressive Boolean formulas. Potential
applications include credit scoring and diagnosis of medical conditions. The
Boolean formula defines a rule with tunable complexity (or interpretability),
according to which input data are classified. Such a formula can include any
operator that can be applied to one or more Boolean variables, thus providing
higher expressivity compared to more rigid rule-based and tree-based
approaches. The classifier is trained using native local optimization
techniques, efficiently searching the space of feasible formulas. Shallow rules
can be determined by fast Integer Linear Programming (ILP) or Quadratic
Unconstrained Binary Optimization (QUBO) solvers, potentially powered by
special purpose hardware or quantum devices. We combine the expressivity and
efficiency of the native local optimizer with the fast operation of these
devices by executing non-local moves that optimize over subtrees of the full
Boolean formula. We provide extensive numerical benchmarking results featuring
several baselines on well-known public datasets. Based on the results, we find
that the native local rule classifier is generally competitive with the other
classifiers. The addition of non-local moves achieves similar results with
fewer iterations, and therefore using specialized or quantum hardware could
lead to a speedup by fast proposal of non-local moves.