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Back to basics to open the black box

Most research efforts in machine learning focus on performance and are detached from an explanation of the behaviour of the model. We call for going back to basics of machine learning methods, with more focus on the development of a basic understanding grounded in statistical theory.

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Fig. 1: Classical and modern algorithm-oriented machine learning.
Fig. 2: Frameworks of machine learning research.

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Acknowledgements

D.M. was funded by grants 22/06211-2 and 23/00256-7, São Paulo Research Foundation (FAPESP). J.B. was funded by grants 14/50937-1 and 2020/06950-4, São Paulo Research Foundation (FAPESP).

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Correspondence to Diego Marcondes.

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None of the authors have conflict of interest or competing interests pertaining to this work.

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Nature Machine Intelligence thanks Yiqun Chen for their contribution to the peer review of this work.

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Marcondes, D., Simonis, A. & Barrera, J. Back to basics to open the black box. Nat Mach Intell 6, 498–501 (2024). https://doi.org/10.1038/s42256-024-00842-6

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