System and method for generating contrastive explanations for text guided by attributes

A computer program product comprising:

• one or more computer-readable storage media and program instructions stored on the one or more computer-readable storage media, the program instructions comprising:
• program instructions to receive a string of text from a user;
• program instructions to determine one or more classifications for at least one word in the string of text by a classification model;
• program instructions to determine a plurality of perturbations of the at least one word based on the one or more classifications, wherein the plurality of perturbations do not share the same one or more classifications as the at least one word in the string of text;
• program instructions to select a perturbation of the string of text based on (i) an edit distance between the string of text and the plurality of perturbations, and (ii) a fluency metric for each of the plurality of perturbations;
• and
• program instructions to provide the perturbation of the string of text to the user.

A computer system comprising:

• one or more computer processors;
• one or more computer readable storage media;
• and
• program instructions stored on the computer readable storage media for execution by at least one of the one or more processors, the program instructions comprising:
• program instructions to receive a string of text from a user;
• program instructions to determine one or more classifications for at least one word in the string of text by a classification model;
• program instructions to determine a plurality of perturbations of the at least one word based on the one or more classifications, wherein the plurality of perturbations do not share the same one or more classifications as the at least one word in the string of text;
• program instructions to select a perturbation of the string of text based on (i) an edit distance between the string of text and the plurality of perturbations, and (ii) a fluency metric for each of the plurality of perturbations;
• and
• program instructions to provide the perturbation of the string of text to the user.