Counterfactuals Unchained: How Causality Escapes Its Own Models
A loan is rejected. Now explain why. A borrower is rejected by an automated lending system. The compliance team asks a simple question: What caused the rejection? A naïve answer points to a variable: low income, high debt ratio, thin credit history, missing documentation, or some equally respectable-looking field in the model. A better answer asks what would have happened if that variable had changed. A still better answer asks which surrounding facts must be held fixed while we imagine that change. ...