Does a Neural Network Really Encode Symbolic Concepts?

Code

• github.com/sjtu-xai-lab/interaction-concept
  OfficialIn paperpytorch★ 10

Abstract

Recently, a series of studies have tried to extract interactions between input variables modeled by a DNN and define such interactions as concepts encoded by the DNN. However, strictly speaking, there still lacks a solid guarantee whether such interactions indeed represent meaningful concepts. Therefore, in this paper, we examine the trustworthiness of interaction concepts from four perspectives. Extensive empirical studies have verified that a well-trained DNN usually encodes sparse, transferable, and discriminative concepts, which is partially aligned with human intuition.

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