# Beyond the Black Box: Do More Complex Deep Learning Models Provide Superior XAI Explanations?

arXiv: https://arxiv.org/abs/2405.08658 · HTML: https://mlsanity.com/paper/2405.08658/

## Key facts

- Cited by 1 papers in the map (data through 14 Oct 2026).
- Builds on 30 of its 65 references that are in the map.
- First posted on arXiv 14 May 2024.

## Builds on (most cited first, 30 of 30)

- [Deep Residual Learning for Image Recognition](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1512.03385/) (2015)
- [Language Models are Few-Shot Learners](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2005.14165/) (2020)
- [An Image is Worth 16x16 Words: Transformers for Image Recognition at Scale](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2010.11929/) (2020)
- [PyTorch: An Imperative Style, High-Performance Deep Learning Library](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1912.01703/) (2019)
- [Densely Connected Convolutional Networks](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1608.06993/) (2016)
- [A Unified Approach to Interpreting Model Predictions](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1705.07874/) (2017)
- ["Why Should I Trust You?": Explaining the Predictions of Any Classifier](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1602.04938/) (2016)
- [Axiomatic Attribution for Deep Networks](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1703.01365/) (2017)
- [Deep Inside Convolutional Networks: Visualising Image Classification Models and Saliency Maps](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1312.6034/) (2013)
- [Adversarial examples in the physical world](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1607.02533/) (2016)
- [Learning Important Features Through Propagating Activation Differences](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1704.02685/) (2017)
- [CheXpert: A Large Chest Radiograph Dataset with Uncertainty Labels and Expert Comparison](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1901.07031/) (2019)
- [Towards A Rigorous Science of Interpretable Machine Learning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1702.08608/) (2017)
- [A Survey Of Methods For Explaining Black Box Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1802.01933/) (2018)
- [Practical Black-Box Attacks against Machine Learning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1602.02697/) (2016)
- [A Benchmark for Interpretability Methods in Deep Neural Networks](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1806.10758/) (2018)
- [CheXNet: Radiologist-Level Pneumonia Detection on Chest X-Rays with Deep Learning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1711.05225/) (2017)
- [Interpretation of Neural Networks is Fragile](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1710.10547/) (2017)
- [The (Un)reliability of saliency methods](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1711.00867/) (2017)
- [Explaining NonLinear Classification Decisions with Deep Taylor Decomposition](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1512.02479/) (2015)
- [Visualizing the Effects of Predictor Variables in Black Box Supervised Learning Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1612.08468/) (2016)
- [Can AI help in screening Viral and COVID-19 pneumonia?](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2003.13145/) (2020)
- [Wider or Deeper: Revisiting the ResNet Model for Visual Recognition](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1611.10080/) (2016)
- [Quantus: An Explainable AI Toolkit for Responsible Evaluation of Neural Network Explanations and Beyond](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2202.06861/) (2022)
- [Efficient Deep Learning: A Survey on Making Deep Learning Models Smaller, Faster, and Better](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2106.08962/) (2021)
- [COVID-19 Infection Map Generation and Detection from Chest X-Ray Images](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2009.12698/) (2020)
- [NoiseGrad: Enhancing Explanations by Introducing Stochasticity to Model Weights](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2106.10185/) (2021)
- [Towards Training Reproducible Deep Learning Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2202.02326/) (2022)
- [Understanding Deep Architectures using a Recursive Convolutional Network](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1312.1847/) (2013)
- [The Explanation Game: Explaining Machine Learning Models Using Shapley Values](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1909.08128/) (2019)

## Built on by (most cited first, 1 of 1)

- [GraphXAIN: Narratives to Explain Graph Neural Networks](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2411.02540/) (2024)

## Abstract (arXiv)

The increasing complexity of Artificial Intelligence models poses challenges to interpretability, particularly in the healthcare sector. This study investigates the impact of deep learning model complexity and Explainable AI (XAI) efficacy, utilizing four ResNet architectures (ResNet-18, 34, 50, 101). Through methodical experimentation on 4,369 lung X-ray images of COVID-19-infected and healthy patients, the research evaluates models' classification performance and the relevance of corresponding XAI explanations with respect to the ground-truth disease masks. Results indicate that the increase in model complexity is associated with a decrease in classification accuracy and AUC-ROC scores (ResNet-18: 98.4%, 0.997; ResNet-101: 95.9%, 0.988). Notably, in eleven out of twelve statistical tests performed, no statistically significant differences occurred between XAI quantitative metrics - Relevance Rank Accuracy and the proposed Positive Attribution Ratio - across trained models. These results suggest that increased model complexity does not consistently lead to higher performance or relevance of explanations for models' decision-making processes.