Comment by nthr on Deep Learning Systems Are Not Less Interpretable Than Logic/Probability/Etc · 2022-06-05T06:20:19.672Z · LW · GW

I'm confused about the instances of deep-learning vs. non-deep-learning that you're comparing. Do you have any concrete examples in mind, where there's a deep-learning model and a non-deep-learning model addressing the same task, and where the non-deep-learning model might be more interpretable at first blush, but where you argue it's not?

Your non-deep-learning example is a small causal diagram, which might be a “model,” but what does it… do? (Maybe I'm just ignorant here.) Meanwhile the deep learning example you allude to is a neural network which more concretely does something: it’s an image recognition algorithm for trees. So I’m not sure how to compare the interpretability of these two examples.  They seem like totally different creatures.

I would have thought you wanted to compare (say) a deep-learning image recognition algorithm with some more old-fashioned, non-deep-learning image recognition algorithm.  Maybe the old-fashioned algorithm looks for trees by finding long vertical edges with brown interiors.  The old-fashioned algorithm probably doesn’t work very well.  But it does seem more interpretable, right?