2024/01/16 by Rahul Sharma, Sharma, Rahul, Sergey Redyuk +10 · 1 citation
Computer Science · #Adversarial Robustness in Machine Learning #Cryptography and Security (cs.CR) #Explainable Artificial Intelligence (XAI) #FOS: Computer and information sciences #Machine Learning (cs.LG) #Machine Learning and Data Classification
paper · pdf · doi:10.48550/arxiv.2401.08513
openalex publication_date 2024/01/16 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/28
Explainable AI (XAI) and interpretable machine learning methods help to build trust in model predictions and derived insights, yet also present a perverse incentive for analysts to manipulate XAI metrics to support pre-specified conclusions. This paper introduces the concept of X-hacking, a form of p-hacking applied to XAI metrics such as SHAP values. We show how easily an automated machine learning pipeline can be adapted to exploit model multiplicity at scale: searching a Rashomon set of 'defensible' models with similar predictive performance to find a desired explanation. We formulate the trade-off between explanation and accuracy as a multi-objective optimisation problem, and illustrate empirically on familiar real-world datasets that, on average, Bayesian optimisation accelerates X-hacking 3-fold for features susceptible to it, versus random sampling. We show the vulnerability of a dataset to X-hacking can be determined by information redundancy among features. Finally, we suggest possible methods for detection and prevention, and discuss ethical implications for the credibility and reproducibility of XAI.