# CB-SLICE: Concept-Based Interpretable Error Slice Discovery

arXiv: https://arxiv.org/abs/2605.29836 · HTML: https://mlsanity.com/paper/2605.29836/

## Key facts

- No citing papers in the map yet (data through 14 Oct 2026).
- Builds on 41 of its 65 references that are in the map.
- First posted on arXiv 28 May 2026.

## Builds on (most cited first, 30 of 41)

- [Deep Residual Learning for Image Recognition](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1512.03385/) (2015)
- [Learning Transferable Visual Models From Natural Language Supervision](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2103.00020/) (2021)
- [High-Resolution Image Synthesis with Latent Diffusion Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2112.10752/) (2021)
- [DINOv2: Learning Robust Visual Features without Supervision](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2304.07193/) (2023)
- [Densely Connected Convolutional Networks](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1608.06993/) (2016)
- [Improved Baselines with Visual Instruction Tuning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2310.03744/) (2023)
- [Deep Learning Face Attributes in the Wild](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1411.7766/) (2014)
- [A Survey on Bias and Fairness in Machine Learning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1908.09635/) (2019)
- [Distributionally Robust Neural Networks for Group Shifts: On the Importance of Regularization for Worst-Case Generalization](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1911.08731/) (2019)
- [Concept Bottleneck Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2007.04612/) (2020)
- [Bias and Fairness in Large Language Models: A Survey](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2309.00770/) (2023)
- [ClipCap: CLIP Prefix for Image Captioning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2111.09734/) (2021)
- [Language in a Bottle: Language Model Guided Concept Bottlenecks for Interpretable Image Classification](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2211.11158/) (2022)
- [Post-hoc Concept Bottleneck Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2205.15480/) (2022)
- [Label-Free Concept Bottleneck Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2304.06129/) (2023)
- [On Completeness-aware Concept-Based Explanations in Deep Neural Networks](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1910.07969/) (2019)
- [Multiaccuracy: Black-Box Post-Processing for Fairness in Classification](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1805.12317/) (2018)
- [No Subclass Left Behind: Fine-Grained Robustness in Coarse-Grained Classification Problems](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2011.12945/) (2020)
- [Domino: Discovering Systematic Errors with Cross-Modal Embeddings](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2203.14960/) (2022)
- [Disparities in Dermatology AI: Assessments Using Diverse Clinical Images](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2111.08006/) (2021)
- [Promises and Pitfalls of Black-Box Concept Learning Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2106.13314/) (2021)
- [Probabilistic Concept Bottleneck Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2306.01574/) (2023)
- [Distilling Model Failures as Directions in Latent Space](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2206.14754/) (2022)
- [MetaShift: A Dataset of Datasets for Evaluating Contextual Distribution Shifts and Training Conflicts](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2202.06523/) (2022)
- [Discover and Cure: Concept-aware Mitigation of Spurious Correlation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2305.00650/) (2023)
- [A Closer Look at the Intervention Procedure of Concept Bottleneck Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2302.14260/) (2023)
- [The Spotlight: A General Method for Discovering Systematic Errors in Deep Learning Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2107.00758/) (2021)
- [Discovering and Mitigating Visual Biases through Keyword Explanation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2301.11104/) (2023)
- [Post-Hoc Explanations Fail to Achieve their Purpose in Adversarial Contexts](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2201.10295/) (2022)
- [Stochastic Concept Bottleneck Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2406.19272/) (2024)

## Abstract (arXiv)

Despite strong average-case performance, deep learning models often exhibit systematic errors on specific population groups, known as error slices. Identifying these groups and the root causes of their failures is critical for model debugging and bias mitigation. However, existing error Slice Discovery Methods (SDMs) typically generate explanations disconnected from the model's inference process, thus only approximating the underlying error source and may be inaccurate. We address this limitation by leveraging Concept Bottleneck Models (CBMs), whose predictions are directly dependent on human-understandable semantic concepts. Since downstream task failures in CBMs commonly arise from concept mispredictions, concept representations provide a strong candidate for error slice identification, offering fine-grained explanations directly linked to the error source. Building on this insight, we introduce CB-SLICE, a concept-based SDM that groups samples with shared concept prediction failures and identifies the keyword concepts most responsible for each slice's failure mode. Across multiple benchmarks, we show that CB-SLICE outperforms state-of-the-art methods in uncovering well-known biases while providing richer and more faithful explanations of model errors.