Ablation (artificial intelligence)

In artificial intelligence (AI), particularly machine learning (ML),^[1] ablation is the removal of a component of an AI system. An ablation study aims to determine the contribution of a component to an AI system by removing the component, and then analyzing the resultant performance of the system.^[2]

The term is an analogy with biology (removal of components of an organism), and is particularly used in the analysis of artificial neural networks by analogy with ablative brain surgery.^[3] Other analogies include other neurological systems such as that of Drosophila, and the vertebrate brain.

Ablation studies require that a system exhibit graceful degradation: the system must continue to function even when certain components are missing or degraded.^[4] According to some researchers, ablation studies have been deemed a convenient technique in investigating artificial intelligence and its durability to structural damages.^[5]

Ablation studies damage or remove certain components in a controlled setting to investigate all possible outcomes of system failure; this characterizes how each action impacts overall system performance and capability. The ablation process can be used to test systems that perform tasks such as speech recognition, object detection, and robot control.^[6]