An Immersive Node-Link Visualization of Artificial Neural Networks for Machine Learning Experts

Abstract

The black box problem of artificial neural networks (ANNs) is still a very relevant issue. When communicating basic concepts of ANNs, they are often depicted as node-link diagrams. Despite this being a straight forward way to visualize them, it is rarely used outside an educational context. However, we hypothesize that large-scale node-link diagrams of full ANNs could be useful even to machine learning experts. Hence, we present a visualization tool that depicts convolutional ANNs as node-link diagrams using immersive virtual reality. We applied our tool to a use-case in the field of machine learning research and adapted it to the specific challenges. Finally, we performed an expert review to evaluate the usefulness of our visualization. We found that our node-link visualization of ANNs was perceived as helpful in this professional context.