Interpreting Deep Neural Networks with the Package innsight

Abstract

The R package innsight offers a general toolbox for revealing variable-wise interpretations of deep neural networks' predictions with so-called feature attribution methods. Aside from the unified and user-friendly framework, the package stands out in three ways: It is generally the first R package implementing feature attribution methods for neural networks. Secondly, it operates independently of the deep learning library, allowing the interpretation of neural networks from any R package, including keras, torch, neuralnet, and even custom models. Despite its flexibility, innsight benefits internally from the torch package's fast and efficient array calculations, which builds on LibTorch - PyTorch's C++ backend - without a Python dependency. Finally, it offers a variety of visualization tools for tabular, signal, image data, or a combination of these. Additionally, the plots can be rendered interactively using the plotly package.