Challenging the Black Box: A Comprehensive Evaluation of Attribution Maps of CNN Applications in Agriculture and Forestry
<|reference_start|>Challenging the Black Box: A Comprehensive Evaluation of Attribution Maps of CNN Applications in Agriculture and Forestry: In this study, we explore the explainability of neural networks in agriculture and forestry, specifically in fertilizer treatment classification and wood identification. The opaque nature of these models, often considered 'black boxes', is addressed through an extensive evaluation of state-of-the-art Attribution Maps (AMs), also known as class activation maps (CAMs) or saliency maps. Our comprehensive qualitative and quantitative analysis of these AMs uncovers critical practical limitations. Findings reveal that AMs frequently fail to consistently highlight crucial features and often misalign with the features considered important by domain experts. These discrepancies raise substantial questions about the utility of AMs in understanding the decision-making process of neural networks. Our study provides critical insights into the trustworthiness and practicality of AMs within the agriculture and forestry sectors, thus facilitating a better understanding of neural networks in these application areas.<|reference_end|>
@article{nieradzik2024challenging,
    title={Challenging the Black Box: A Comprehensive Evaluation of Attribution
  Maps of CNN Applications in Agriculture and Forestry},
    author={Lars Nieradzik, Henrike Stephani, J"ordis Sieburg-Rockel, Stephanie
  Helmling, Andrea Olbrich, Janis Keuper},
    journal={Proceedings of the 19th International Joint Conference on Computer
  Vision, Imaging and Computer Graphics Theory and Applications - Volume 2:
  VISAPP, 2024, pp. 483-492},
    year={2024},
    archivePrefix={arXiv},
    eprint={2402.11670},
    primaryClass={cs.CV cs.LG}
}