Improving Interpretability via Regularization of Neural Activation Sensitivity

Abstract: State-of-the-art deep neural networks (DNNs) are highly effective at tackling many real-world tasks. However, their wide adoption in mission-critical contexts is hampered by two major weaknesses - their susceptibility to adversarial attacks and their opaqueness. The former raises concerns about the security and generalization of DNNs in real-world conditions, whereas the latter impedes users' trust in their output. In this research, we (1) examine the effect of adversarial robustness on interpretability and (2) present a novel approach for improving the interpretability of DNNs that is based on regularization of neural activation sensitivity. We evaluate the interpretability of models trained using our method to that of standard models and models trained using state-of-the-art adversarial robustness techniques. Our results show that adversarially robust models are superior to standard models and that models trained using our proposed method are even better than adversarially robust models in terms of interpretability.