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Counterfactual explanations provide a potentially significant solution to the Explainable AI (XAI) problem, but good, native counterfactuals have been shown to rarely occur in most datasets. Hence, the most popular methods generate…

Artificial Intelligence · Computer Science 2021-01-25 Barry Smyth , Mark T Keane

Machine learning algorithms in socially sensitive domains (e.g., credit decisions) often focus on equalizing predictive outcomes. However, satisfying these metrics does not guarantee that models use the same reasoning for different groups.…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2026-05-14 Gideon Popoola , John Sheppard

Automated decision support systems that are able to infer second opinions from experts can potentially facilitate a more efficient allocation of resources; they can help decide when and from whom to seek a second opinion. In this paper, we…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2022-07-01 Nina L. Corvelo Benz , Manuel Gomez Rodriguez

Algorithmic fairness is typically studied from the perspective of predictions. Instead, here we investigate fairness from the perspective of recourse actions suggested to individuals to remedy an unfavourable classification. We propose two…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2022-03-08 Julius von Kügelgen , Amir-Hossein Karimi , Umang Bhatt , Isabel Valera , Adrian Weller , Bernhard Schölkopf

Selection bias, arising from the systematic inclusion or exclusion of certain samples, poses a significant challenge to the validity of causal inference. While Bareinboim et al. introduced methods for recovering unbiased observational and…

Methodology · Statistics 2025-06-05 Jingyang He , Shuai Wang , Ang Li

We present a novel formalization of counterfactual conditionals in a quantified modal logic. Counterfactual conditionals play a vital role in ethical and moral reasoning. Prior work has shown that moral reasoning systems (and more…

Artificial Intelligence · Computer Science 2017-11-06 Naveen Sundar Govindarajulu , Selmer Bringsjord

In this paper, I argue that counterfactual fairness does not constitute a necessary condition for an algorithm to be fair, and subsequently suggest how the constraint can be modified in order to remedy this shortcoming. To this end, I…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2020-11-17 Fabian Beigang

Counterfactual explanations are increasingly used as an Explainable Artificial Intelligence (XAI) technique to provide stakeholders of complex machine learning algorithms with explanations for data-driven decisions. The popularity of…

Artificial Intelligence · Computer Science 2023-04-26 Dieter Brughmans , Lissa Melis , David Martens

Counterfactual inference aims to estimate the counterfactual outcome at the individual level given knowledge of an observed treatment and the factual outcome, with broad applications in fields such as epidemiology, econometrics, and…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2025-10-06 Peng Wu , Haoxuan Li , Chunyuan Zheng , Yan Zeng , Jiawei Chen , Yang Liu , Ruocheng Guo , Kun Zhang

The trustworthiness of AI decision-making systems is increasingly important. A key feature of such systems is the ability to provide recommendations for how an individual may reverse a negative decision, a problem known as algorithmic…

Artificial Intelligence · Computer Science 2026-05-13 Drago Plecko , Collin Wang , Elias Bareinboim

Although standard Machine Learning models are optimized for making predictions about observations, more and more they are used for making predictions about the results of actions. An important goal of Explainable Artificial Intelligence…

Artificial Intelligence · Computer Science 2022-02-15 Sander Beckers

Perception occurs when individuals interpret the same information differently. It is a known cognitive phenomenon with implications for bias in human decision-making. Perception, however, remains understudied in machine learning (ML). This…

Artificial Intelligence · Computer Science 2025-10-21 Jose M. Alvarez , Salvatore Ruggieri

We address the challenge of explaining counterfactual outcomes in multi-agent Markov decision processes. In particular, we aim to explain the total counterfactual effect of an agent's action on the outcome of a realized scenario through its…

Artificial Intelligence · Computer Science 2025-10-22 Stelios Triantafyllou , Aleksa Sukovic , Yasaman Zolfimoselo , Goran Radanovic

Counterfactual examples for an input -- perturbations that change specific features but not others -- have been shown to be useful for evaluating bias of machine learning models, e.g., against specific demographic groups. However,…

Computer Vision and Pattern Recognition · Computer Science 2022-01-07 Saloni Dash , Vineeth N Balasubramanian , Amit Sharma

Counterfactual explanations are widely used to interpret machine learning predictions by identifying minimal changes to input features that would alter a model's decision. However, most existing counterfactual methods have not been tested…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2026-02-03 Leonidas Christodoulou , Chang Sun

Counterfactual explanations (CEs) are a powerful means for understanding how decisions made by algorithms can be changed. Researchers have proposed a number of desiderata that CEs should meet to be practically useful, such as requiring…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2022-09-26 Marco Virgolin , Saverio Fracaros

In this paper titled A Symbolic Approach for Counterfactual Explanations we propose a novel symbolic approach to provide counterfactual explanations for a classifier predictions. Contrary to most explanation approaches where the goal is to…

Artificial Intelligence · Computer Science 2022-06-22 Ryma Boumazouza , Fahima Cheikh-Alili , Bertrand Mazure , Karim Tabia

A visual counterfactual explanation replaces image regions in a query image with regions from a distractor image such that the system's decision on the transformed image changes to the distractor class. In this work, we present a novel…

Computer Vision and Pattern Recognition · Computer Science 2022-07-19 Simon Vandenhende , Dhruv Mahajan , Filip Radenovic , Deepti Ghadiyaram

Structural Equation Models (SEM) are the standard approach to representing causal dependencies between variables in causal models. In this paper we propose a new interpretation of SEMs when reasoning about Actual Causality, in which SEMs…

Artificial Intelligence · Computer Science 2025-12-23 Maksim Gladyshev , Natasha Alechina , Mehdi Dastani , Dragan Doder , Brian Logan

The challenge of balancing fairness and predictive accuracy in machine learning models, especially when sensitive attributes such as race, gender, or age are considered, has motivated substantial research in recent years. Counterfactual…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2025-02-21 Bowei Tian , Ziyao Wang , Shwai He , Wanghao Ye , Guoheng Sun , Yucong Dai , Yongkai Wu , Ang Li