English

Assessing the Reliability of Deep Learning Classifiers Through Robustness Evaluation and Operational Profiles

Machine Learning 2021-06-03 v1

Abstract

The utilisation of Deep Learning (DL) is advancing into increasingly more sophisticated applications. While it shows great potential to provide transformational capabilities, DL also raises new challenges regarding its reliability in critical functions. In this paper, we present a model-agnostic reliability assessment method for DL classifiers, based on evidence from robustness evaluation and the operational profile (OP) of a given application. We partition the input space into small cells and then "assemble" their robustness (to the ground truth) according to the OP, where estimators on the cells' robustness and OPs are provided. Reliability estimates in terms of the probability of misclassification per input (pmi) can be derived together with confidence levels. A prototype tool is demonstrated with simplified case studies. Model assumptions and extension to real-world applications are also discussed. While our model easily uncovers the inherent difficulties of assessing the DL dependability (e.g. lack of data with ground truth and scalability issues), we provide preliminary/compromised solutions to advance in this research direction.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.2106.01258,
  title  = {Assessing the Reliability of Deep Learning Classifiers Through Robustness Evaluation and Operational Profiles},
  author = {Xingyu Zhao and Wei Huang and Alec Banks and Victoria Cox and David Flynn and Sven Schewe and Xiaowei Huang},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2106.01258},
  year   = {2021}
}

Comments

Accepted by the AISafety'21 Workshop at IJCAI-21. To appear in a volume of CEUR Workshop Proceedings

R2 v1 2026-06-24T02:45:27.796Z