# Counterfactual Explanation Generation with s(CASP)

arXiv: https://arxiv.org/abs/2310.14497 · HTML: https://mlsanity.com/paper/2310.14497/

## Key facts

- No citing papers in the map yet (data through 14 Oct 2026).
- Builds on 13 of its 28 references that are in the map.
- First posted on arXiv 23 Oct 2023.

## Builds on (most cited first, 13 of 13)

- [XGBoost: A Scalable Tree Boosting System](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1603.02754/) (2016)
- [Counterfactual Explanations without Opening the Black Box: Automated Decisions and the GDPR](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1711.00399/) (2017)
- [Actionable Recourse in Linear Classification](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1809.06514/) (2018)
- [Model-Agnostic Counterfactual Explanations for Consequential Decisions](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1905.11190/) (2019)
- [Efficient Search for Diverse Coherent Explanations](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1901.04909/) (2019)
- [Interpretable Predictions of Tree-based Ensembles via Actionable Feature Tweaking](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1706.06691/) (2017)
- [Measurable Counterfactual Local Explanations for Any Classifier](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1908.03020/) (2019)
- [Constraint Answer Set Programming without Grounding](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1804.11162/) (2018)
- [A New Algorithm to Automate Inductive Learning of Default Theories](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1707.02693/) (2017)
- [FOLD-R++: A Scalable Toolset for Automated Inductive Learning of Default Theories from Mixed Data](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2110.07843/) (2021)
- [Answer-Set Programs for Reasoning about Counterfactual Interventions and Responsibility Scores for Classification](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2107.10159/) (2021)
- [FOLD-RM: A Scalable, Efficient, and Explainable Inductive Learning Algorithm for Multi-Category Classification of Mixed Data](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2202.06913/) (2022)
- [Modeling and Reasoning in Event Calculus using Goal-Directed Constraint Answer Set Programming](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2106.14566/) (2021)

## Abstract (arXiv)

Machine learning models that automate decision-making are increasingly being used in consequential areas such as loan approvals, pretrial bail, hiring, and many more. Unfortunately, most of these models are black-boxes, i.e., they are unable to reveal how they reach these prediction decisions. A need for transparency demands justification for such predictions. An affected individual might desire explanations to understand why a decision was made. Ethical and legal considerations may further require informing the individual of changes in the input attribute that could be made to produce a desirable outcome. This paper focuses on the latter problem of automatically generating counterfactual explanations. Our approach utilizes answer set programming and the s(CASP) goal-directed ASP system. Answer Set Programming (ASP) is a well-known knowledge representation and reasoning paradigm. s(CASP) is a goal-directed ASP system that executes answer-set programs top-down without grounding them. The query-driven nature of s(CASP) allows us to provide justifications as proof trees, which makes it possible to analyze the generated counterfactual explanations. We show how counterfactual explanations are computed and justified by imagining multiple possible worlds where some or all factual assumptions are untrue and, more importantly, how we can navigate between these worlds. We also show how our algorithm can be used to find the Craig Interpolant for a class of answer set programs for a failing query.