A Query-Optimal Algorithm for Finding Counterfactuals

Abstract: We design an algorithm for finding counterfactuals with strong theoretical guarantees on its performance. For any monotone model $f : X^d \to {0,1}$ and instance $x^\star$, our algorithm makes [ {S(f)^{O(\Delta_f(x^\star))}\cdot \log d}] queries to $f$ and returns {an {\sl optimal}} counterfactual for $x^\star$: a nearest instance $x'$ to $x^\star$ for which $f(x')\ne f(x^\star)$. Here $S(f)$ is the sensitivity of $f$, a discrete analogue of the Lipschitz constant, and $\Delta_f(x^\star)$ is the distance from $x^\star$ to its nearest counterfactuals. The previous best known query complexity was $d^{\,O(\Delta_f(x^\star))}$, achievable by brute-force local search. We further prove a lower bound of $S(f)^{\Omega(\Delta_f(x^\star))} + \Omega(\log d)$ on the query complexity of any algorithm, thereby showing that the guarantees of our algorithm are essentially optimal.