Data science has traditionally taken extensive domain expertise and arduous human effort to design targeted experiments which isolate effects in observational data. We are actively building AI tools to automate and streamline these efforts.
Recent years have seen important advances in the building of interpretable models, machine learning models that are designed to be easily understood by humans. In this work, we show that large language models (LLMs) are remarkably good at working with interpretable models, too. In particular, we show that LLMs can describe, interpret, and debug Generalized Additive Models (GAMs). Combining the flexibility of LLMs with the breadth of statistical patterns accurately described by GAMs enables dataset summarization, question answering, and model critique. LLMs can also improve the interaction between domain experts and interpretable models, and generate hypotheses about the underlying phenomenon. We release TalkToEBM as an open-source LLM-GAM interface.
LLMs Understand Glass-Box Models, Discover Surprises, and Suggest Repairs
We show that large language models (LLMs) are remarkably good at working with interpretable models that decompose complex outcomes into univariate graph-represented components. By adopting a hierarchical approach to reasoning, LLMs can provide comprehensive model-level summaries without ever requiring the entire model to fit in context. This approach enables LLMs to apply their extensive background knowledge to automate common tasks in data science such as detecting anomalies that contradict prior knowledge, describing potential reasons for the anomalies, and suggesting repairs that would remove the anomalies. We use multiple examples in healthcare to demonstrate the utility of these new capabilities of LLMs, with particular emphasis on Generalized Additive Models (GAMs). Finally, we present the package 𝚃𝚊𝚕𝚔𝚃𝚘𝙴𝙱𝙼 as an open-source LLM-GAM interface.