Individual Explanations in Machine Learning Models: A Case Study on Poverty Estimation

A. Relevance of Model Explanations in Real-World Contexts Complex estimation and decision-making tasks have traditionally been analyzed and judged by human experts. Hence, decisions have typically been able to be complemented with human-interpretable justifications, when needed, as experts can normally explain the line-of-thought that led to their own decision-making. However, in the past two decades, algorithmic decision-making has spread increasingly to many relevant societal contexts. Despite the notable enthusiasm for the potential benefit that this type of technology can bring, the underlying methods used are typically not inherently transparent, in the sense that they do not readily provide human-interpretable justifications for their decisions [1]. Moreover, in recent years there is a trend where the most successful algorithms, particularly in complex tasks like machine vision and natural language processing, tend to rely on highly complex models, which has led to a further increase in tension between accuracy and interpretability [2]. Relevant societal contexts where algorithmic decision systems have gained substantial traction include medical diagnosis and treatment [3], counter-terrorism [4], criminal justice [5], and risk assessments for credits and insurance [6]. In such impactful contexts, there is a legitimate need for providing human-interpretable explanations along with the estimations and decisions made. Indeed, lack of interpretability has become a barrier to the adoption of machine learning-based systems in many institutions and companies. Hence the value of complementing ML models with human-interpretable accounts of the statistical rationals behind their estimations, in a way that human decision-makers can more easily understand machine estimations, and even integrate their statistical rationals with qualitative information and human expert judgements.