Can LLM Assist in the Evaluation of the Quality of Machine Learning Explanations?

Abstract: EXplainable machine learning (XML) has recently emerged to address the mystery mechanisms of ML systems by interpreting their 'black box' results. Despite the development of various explanation methods, determining the most suitable XML method for specific ML contexts remains unclear, highlighting the need for effective evaluation of explanations. The evaluating capabilities of the Transformer-based LLM present an opportunity to adopt LLM-as-a-Judge for assessing explanations. In this paper, we propose a workflow that integrates both LLM-based and human judges for evaluating explanations. We examine how LLM-based judges evaluate the quality of various explanation methods and compare their evaluation capabilities to those of human judges within an iris classification scenario, employing both subjective and objective metrics. We conclude that while LLM-based judges effectively assess the quality of explanations using subjective metrics, they are not yet sufficiently developed to replace human judges in this role.