Practical do-Shapley Explanations with Estimand-Agnostic Causal Inference

Álvaro Parafita (Barcelona Supercomputing Center (BSC)) · Tomas Garriga (Barcelona Supercomputing Center | Novartis ) · Axel Brando (Barcelona Supercomputing Center (BSC)) · Francisco Cazorla (Barcelona Supercomputing Center)
algorithm accelerationcausal structurecomplex graphscomputation performancedata generating processesestimand-agnostic approachesestimandsexplainability techniquesidentifiable queryinterventional queriesmodel estimationpractical applicationreal-world datasetsreliable explanationsshap

Among explainability techniques, SHAP stands out as one of the most popular, but often overlooks the causal structure of the problem. In response, do-SHAP employs interventional queries, but its reliance on estimands hinders its practical application. To address this problem, we propose the use of estimand-agnostic approaches, which allow for the estimation of any identifiable query from a single model, making do-SHAP feasible on complex graphs. We also develop a novel algorithm to significantly accelerate its computation at a negligible cost, as well as a method to explain inaccessible Data Generating Processes. We demonstrate the estimation and computational performance of our approach, and validate it on two real-world datasets, highlighting its potential in obtaining reliable explanations.