Causal feature learning: an overview

Causal feature learning (CFL) (Chalupka et al., Proceedings of the Thirty-First Conference on Uncertainty in Artificial Intelligence. AUAI Press, Edinburgh, pp 181–190, 2015) is a causal inference framework rooted in the language of causal graphical models (Pearl J, Reasoning and inference. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 2009; Spirtes et al., Causation, Prediction, and Search. Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Massachusetts, 2000), and computational mechanics (Shalizi, PhD thesis, University of Wisconsin at Madison, 2001). CFL is aimed at discovering high-level causal relations from low-level data, and at reducing the experimental effort to understand confounding among the high-level variables. We first review the scientific motivation for CFL, then present a detailed introduction to the framework, laying out the definitions and algorithmic steps. A simple example illustrates the techniques involved in the learning steps and provides visual intuition. Finally, we discuss the limitations of the current framework and list a number of open problems.