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arXiv · 2408.07097

Attention Please: What Transformer Models Really Learn for Process Prediction

Martin Käppel·Lars Ackermann·Stefan Jablonski·Simon Härtl
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Abstract

Predictive process monitoring aims to support the execution of a process during runtime with various predictions about the further evolution of a process instance. In the last years a plethora of deep learning architectures have been established as state-of-the-art for different prediction targets, among others the transformer architecture. The transformer architecture is equipped with a powerful attention mechanism, assigning attention scores to each input part that allows to prioritize most relevant information leading to more accurate and contextual output. However, deep learning models largely represent a black box, i.e., their reasoning or decision-making process cannot be understood in detail. This paper examines whether the attention scores of a transformer based next-activity prediction model can serve as an explanation for its decision-making. We find that attention scores in next-activity prediction models can serve as explainers and exploit this fact in two proposed graph-based explanation approaches. The gained insights could inspire future work on the improvement of predictive business process models as well as enabling a neural network based mining of process models from event logs.

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Martin Käppel, Lars Ackermann, Stefan Jablonski, Simon Härtl. 2024-08-12. Attention Please: What Transformer Models Really Learn for Process Prediction. https://arxiv.org/abs/2408.07097

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