# Fast Explanations via Policy Gradient-Optimized Explainer

arXiv: https://arxiv.org/abs/2405.18664 · HTML: https://mlsanity.com/paper/2405.18664/

## Key facts

- Cited by 1 papers in the map (data through 14 Oct 2026).
- Placed in Interpretable and logic-guided RL, one of 15 directions in Deep reinforcement learning methods.
- Builds on 21 of its 32 references that are in the map.
- First posted on arXiv 29 May 2024.

## Placed in

- Deep reinforcement learning methods / [Interpretable and logic-guided RL](https://mlsanity.com/deeprl/interpretable-and-logic-guided-rl/)

## Builds on (most cited first, 21 of 21)

- [BERT: Pre-training of Deep Bidirectional Transformers for Language Understanding](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1810.04805/) (2018)
- [An Image is Worth 16x16 Words: Transformers for Image Recognition at Scale](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2010.11929/) (2020)
- [U-Net: Convolutional Networks for Biomedical Image Segmentation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1505.04597/) (2015)
- [Proximal Policy Optimization Algorithms](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1707.06347/) (2017)
- [Grad-CAM: Visual Explanations from Deep Networks via Gradient-based Localization](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1610.02391/) (2016)
- [A Unified Approach to Interpreting Model Predictions](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1705.07874/) (2017)
- [Axiomatic Attribution for Deep Networks](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1703.01365/) (2017)
- [Learning Important Features Through Propagating Activation Differences](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1704.02685/) (2017)
- [RISE: Randomized Input Sampling for Explanation of Black-box Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1806.07421/) (2018)
- [Transformer Interpretability Beyond Attention Visualization](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2012.09838/) (2020)
- [Interpretable Explanations of Black Boxes by Meaningful Perturbation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1704.03296/) (2017)
- [ERASER: A Benchmark to Evaluate Rationalized NLP Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1911.03429/) (2019)
- [A Survey of Deep Learning Techniques for Autonomous Driving](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1910.07738/) (2019)
- [Learning to Explain: An Information-Theoretic Perspective on Model Interpretation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1802.07814/) (2018)
- [FastSHAP: Real-Time Shapley Value Estimation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2107.07436/) (2021)
- [Explainable deep learning models in medical image analysis](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2005.13799/) (2020)
- [Deep Learning for Financial Applications : A Survey](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2002.05786/) (2020)
- [Explainable Artificial Intelligence for Autonomous Driving: A Comprehensive Overview and Field Guide for Future Research Directions](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2112.11561/) (2021)
- [CoRTX: Contrastive Framework for Real-time Explanation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2303.02794/) (2023)
- [Efficient XAI Techniques: A Taxonomic Survey](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2302.03225/) (2023)
- [Negative Flux Aggregation to Estimate Feature Attributions](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2301.06989/) (2023)

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

- [Context Attribution with Multi-Armed Bandit Optimization](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2506.19977/) (2025)

## Abstract (arXiv)

The challenge of delivering efficient explanations is a critical barrier that prevents the adoption of model explanations in real-world applications. Existing approaches often depend on extensive model queries for sample-level explanations or rely on expert's knowledge of specific model structures that trade general applicability for efficiency. To address these limitations, this paper introduces a novel framework Fast Explanation (FEX) that represents attribution-based explanations via probability distributions, which are optimized by leveraging the policy gradient method. The proposed framework offers a robust, scalable solution for real-time, large-scale model explanations, bridging the gap between efficiency and applicability. We validate our framework on image and text classification tasks and the experiments demonstrate that our method reduces inference time by over 97% and memory usage by 70% compared to traditional model-agnostic approaches while maintaining high-quality explanations and broad applicability.