Counterfactual Explanations & Adversarial Examples -- Common Grounds, Essential Differences, and Potential Transfers

Abstract

It is well known that adversarial examples and counterfactual explanations are based on the same mathematical model. However, their relationship has not yet been studied at a conceptual level. The present paper fills this gap. We show that counterfactual reasoning is the common basis of the fields and reliable machine learning their shared goal. Moreover, we illustrate to what extent counterfactual explanations can be regarded as the more general concept than adversarial examples. We introduce the conceptual distinction between feasible and contesting counterfactual explanations and argue that adversarial examples are similar to the latter.