๐ŸŽฏ Our paper "Natural Language Counterfactual Explanations for Graphs Using Large Language Models" has been accepted at AISTATS 2025!

Jan 27, 2025ยท
Gabriele Tolomei
Gabriele Tolomei
Flavio Giorgi
Flavio Giorgi
Fabrizio Silvestri
Fabrizio Silvestri
Cesare Campagnano
Cesare Campagnano
ยท 1 min read

Understanding Graph Neural Networks (GNNs) remains a challenging task, especially when it comes to interpreting their predictions. Counterfactual explanations provide an effective way to answer “what-if” questionsโ€”offering insights into how small changes in input data can lead to different model outcomes. However, traditional counterfactual methods often generate highly technical explanations, making them inaccessible to non-expert users.

๐Ÿ’ก What does our work propose?

We introduce a novel approach that leverages open-source Large Language Models (LLMs) to transform counterfactual explanations for GNNs into natural language descriptions. This allows for:

(i) More human-readable and intuitive explanations (ii) Improved accessibility for non-expert users (iii) Better transparency in critical applications, such as fraud detection, financial decision-making, and healthcare

๐Ÿ“Š Our method was evaluated using state-of-the-art counterfactual explainers and multiple graph datasets, demonstrating its effectiveness through both novel evaluation metrics and human assessments. We believe this work is a step toward making AI explainability more interpretable and actionable! ๐Ÿš€

๐Ÿ”— The preprint is available at the following link

Gabriele Tolomei
Authors
Gabriele Tolomei
Associate Professor of Computer Science
Flavio Giorgi
Authors
Flavio Giorgi
PhD Student in Computer Science
Fabrizio Silvestri
Authors
Fabrizio Silvestri
Full Professor of Computer Science
Cesare Campagnano
Authors
Cesare Campagnano
Senior Research Scientist