Philosophy of science

Philosophy of language

Cognitive science

Theory of computation

Algorithm

Counterfactual thinking

Epistemology

Philosophy

Artificial intelligence

Psychology

Philosophy of mind

Relation (database)

Metaphysics

Computer science

Adversarial system

Database

Minds and Machines

The same method that creates adversarial examples (AEs) to fool image-classifiers can be used to generate counterfactual explanations (CEs) that explain algorithmic decisions. This observation has led researchers to consider CEs as AEs by another name. We argue that the relationship to the true label and the tolerance with respect to proximity are two properties that formally distinguish CEs and AEs. Based on these arguments, we introduce CEs, AEs, and related concepts mathematically in a common framework. Furthermore, we show connections between current methods for generating CEs and AEs, and estimate that the fields will merge more and more as the number of common use-cases grows.

The Intriguing Relation Between Counterfactual Explanations and Adversarial Examples