Question 259 - Professional Machine Learning Engineer discussion

The best option for adding explanations to your model code with minimal effort and providing explanations that are as accurate as possible is to upload the custom model to Vertex AI Model Registry and configure feature-based attribution by using sampled Shapley with input baselines. This option allows you to leverage the power and simplicity of Vertex Explainable AI to generate feature attributions for each prediction, and understand how each feature contributes to the model output. Vertex Explainable AI is a service that can help you understand and interpret predictions made by your machine learning models, natively integrated with a number of Google's products and services. Vertex Explainable AI can provide feature-based and example-based explanations to provide better understanding of model decision making. Feature-based explanations are explanations that show how much each feature in the input influenced the prediction. Feature-based explanations can help you debug and improve model performance, build confidence in the predictions, and understand when and why things go wrong. Vertex Explainable AI supports various feature attribution methods, such as sampled Shapley, integrated gradients, and XRAI. Sampled Shapley is a feature attribution method that is based on the Shapley value, which is a concept from game theory that measures how much each player in a cooperative game contributes to the total payoff. Sampled Shapley approximates the Shapley value for each feature by sampling different subsets of features, and computing the marginal contribution of each feature to the prediction. Sampled Shapley can provide accurate and consistent feature attributions, but it can also be computationally expensive. To reduce the computation cost, you can use input baselines, which are reference inputs that are used to compare with the actual inputs. Input baselines can help you define the starting point or the default state of the features, and calculate the feature attributions relative to the input baselines.By uploading the custom model to Vertex AI Model Registry and configuring feature-based attribution by using sampled Shapley with input baselines, you can add explanations to your model code with minimal effort and provide explanations that are as accurate as possible1.

The other options are not as good as option C, for the following reasons:

Option A: Creating an AutoML tabular model by using the BigQuery data with integrated Vertex Explainable AI would require more skills and steps than uploading the custom model to Vertex AI Model Registry and configuring feature-based attribution by using sampled Shapley with input baselines. AutoML tabular is a service that can automatically build and train machine learning models for structured or tabular data. AutoML tabular can use BigQuery as the data source, and provide feature-based explanations by using integrated gradients as the feature attribution method. However, creating an AutoML tabular model by using the BigQuery data with integrated Vertex Explainable AI would require more skills and steps than uploading the custom model to Vertex AI Model Registry and configuring feature-based attribution by using sampled Shapley with input baselines. You would need to create a new AutoML tabular model, import the BigQuery data, configure the model settings, train and evaluate the model, and deploy the model.Moreover, this option would not use your existing custom model, which is already performing well, but create a new model, which may not have the same performance or behavior as your custom model2.

Option B: Creating a BigQuery ML deep neural network model, and using the ML.EXPLAIN_PREDICT method with the num_integral_steps parameter would not allow you to deploy the model to production, and could provide less accurate explanations than using sampled Shapley with input baselines. BigQuery ML is a service that can create and train machine learning models by using SQL queries on BigQuery. BigQuery ML can create a deep neural network model, which is a type of machine learning model that consists of multiple layers of neurons, and can learn complex patterns and relationships from the data. BigQuery ML can also provide feature-based explanations by using the ML.EXPLAIN_PREDICT method, which is a SQL function that returns the feature attributions for each prediction. The ML.EXPLAIN_PREDICT method uses integrated gradients as the feature attribution method, which is a method that calculates the average gradient of the prediction output with respect to the feature values along the path from the input baseline to the input. The num_integral_steps parameter is a parameter that determines the number of steps along the path from the input baseline to the input. However, creating a BigQuery ML deep neural network model, and using the ML.EXPLAIN_PREDICT method with the num_integral_steps parameter would not allow you to deploy the model to production, and could provide less accurate explanations than using sampled Shapley with input baselines. BigQuery ML does not support deploying the model to Vertex AI Endpoints, which is a service that can provide low-latency predictions for individual instances. BigQuery ML only supports batch prediction, which is a service that can provide high-throughput predictions for a large batch of instances.Moreover, integrated gradients can provide less accurate and consistent explanations than sampled Shapley, as integrated gradients can be sensitive to the choice of the input baseline and the num_integral_steps parameter3.

Option D: Updating the custom serving container to include sampled Shapley-based explanations in the prediction outputs would require more skills and steps than uploading the custom model to Vertex AI Model Registry and configuring feature-based attribution by using sampled Shapley with input baselines. A custom serving container is a container image that contains the model, the dependencies, and a web server. A custom serving container can help you customize the prediction behavior of your model, and handle complex or non-standard data formats. However, updating the custom serving container to include sampled Shapley-based explanations in the prediction outputs would require more skills and steps than uploading the custom model to Vertex AI Model Registry and configuring feature-based attribution by using sampled Shapley with input baselines. You would need to write code, implement the sampled Shapley algorithm, build and test the container image, and upload and deploy the container image.Moreover, this option would not leverage the power and simplicity of Vertex Explainable AI, which can provide feature-based explanations natively integrated with Vertex AI services4.

Preparing for Google Cloud Certification: Machine Learning Engineer, Course 3: Production ML Systems, Week 4: Evaluation

Google Cloud Professional Machine Learning Engineer Exam Guide, Section 3: Scaling ML models in production, 3.3 Monitoring ML models in production

Official Google Cloud Certified Professional Machine Learning Engineer Study Guide, Chapter 6: Production ML Systems, Section 6.3: Monitoring ML Models

Vertex Explainable AI

AutoML Tables

BigQuery ML

Using custom containers for prediction