Unveiling the robustness of machine learning families

Abstract The evaluation of machine learning systems has typically been limited to performance measures on clean and curated datasets, which may not accurately reflect their robustness in real-world situations where data distribution can vary from learning to deployment, and where truthfully predict some instances could be more difficult than others. Therefore, a key aspect in understanding robustness is instance difficulty , which refers to the level of unexpectedness of system failure on a specific instance. We present a framework that evaluates the robustness of different ML models using item response theory-based estimates of instance difficulty for supervised tasks. This framework evaluates performance deviations by applying perturbation methods that simulate noise and variability in deployment conditions. Our findings result in the development of a comprehensive taxonomy of ML techniques, based on both the robustness of the models and the difficulty of the instances, providing a deeper understanding of the strengths and limitations of specific families of ML models. This study is a significant step towards exposing vulnerabilities of particular families of ML models.