arXiv research

We observe standard transfer learning can improve prediction accuracies of target tasks at the cost of lowering their prediction fairness -- a phenomenon we named discriminatory transfer. We examine prediction fairness of a standard hypothesis transfer algorithm and a standard multi-task learning algorithm, and show th…

The study compares uniform-price and discriminatory auctions in terms of learning difficulty.

This paper defines less discriminatory algorithms and explores their feasibility.

Private release of sensitive data enables fair learning.

Procedure for determining less discriminatory alternatives in AI audits with limited resources.

r-STSF improves TSC accuracy and interpretability.

Paper exposes vulnerabilities in interpreting machine learning models using adversarial attacks on PD plots.

Recent research has helped to cultivate growing awareness that machine learning systems fueled by big data can create or exacerbate troubling disparities in society. Much of this research comes from outside of the practicing data science community, leaving its members with little concrete guidance to proactively addres…

A machine learning model may exhibit discrimination when used to make decisions involving people. One potential cause for such outcomes is that the model uses a statistical proxy for a protected demographic attribute. In this paper we formulate a definition of proxy use for the setting of linear regression and present …

The intention with this paper is to provide all the estimation concepts and techniques that are needed to implement a two-phases approach to the parametric estimation of probability of default (PD) curves. In the first phase of this approach, a raw PD curve is estimated based on parameters that reflect discriminatory p…

The paper examines the stability of binary choice models using Gini index and scoring indicators.

New metric MADD assesses fairness of predictive student models.

Expands Bayesian experiment design framework to account for model discrepancies.

Many datasets can be viewed as a noisy sampling of an underlying space, and tools from topological data analysis can characterize this structure for the purpose of knowledge discovery. One such tool is persistent homology, which provides a multiscale description of the homological features within a dataset. A useful re…

Efficient methods estimate concordance probability for big data.

Automated decision making systems are increasingly being used in real-world applications. In these systems for the most part, the decision rules are derived by minimizing the training error on the available historical data. Therefore, if there is a bias related to a sensitive attribute such as gender, race, religion, e…

LDA-XGB1 balances fairness and accuracy in lending models.

Discriminatory trade liberalization policies are becoming more popular among world economies. Countries are motivated to enter for regional trade agreements to capture faster economic growth for alleviating poverty. In developing economies like most of the member countries of the Association of South East Asian Nations…

Data-driven algorithms play a large role in decision making across a variety of industries. Increasingly, these algorithms are being used to make decisions that have significant ramifications for people's social and economic well-being, e.g. in sentencing, loan approval, and policing. Amid the proliferation of such sys…

As algorithms increasingly inform and influence decisions made about individuals, it becomes increasingly important to address concerns that these algorithms might be discriminatory. The output of an algorithm can be discriminatory for many reasons, most notably: (1) the data used to train the algorithm might be biased…

Whole MILC learns brain disorder dynamics from unlabeled data.

For distributions $\mathbb{P}$ and $\mathbb{Q}$ with different supports or undefined densities, the divergence $\textrm{D}(\mathbb{P}||\mathbb{Q})$ may not exist. We define a Spread Divergence $\tilde{\textrm{D}}(\mathbb{P}||\mathbb{Q})$ on modified $\mathbb{P}$ and $\mathbb{Q}$ and describe sufficient conditions for t…

Fairness is a critical trait in decision making. As machine-learning models are increasingly being used in sensitive application domains (e.g. education and employment) for decision making, it is crucial that the decisions computed by such models are free of unintended bias. But how can we automatically validate the fa…

The concordance probability or C-index is a popular measure to capture the discriminatory ability of a regression model. In this article, the definition of this measure is adapted to the specific needs of the frequency and severity model, typically used during the technical pricing of a non-life insurance product. Due …

A new framework separates classifier calibration and discrimination.

A new algorithm for efficiently removing specific classes from a model without retraining.

Predictive models are increasingly deployed for the purpose of determining access to services such as credit, insurance, and employment. Despite potential gains in productivity and efficiency, several potential problems have yet to be addressed, particularly the potential for unintentional discrimination. We present an…

Recidivism prediction instruments provide decision makers with an assessment of the likelihood that a criminal defendant will reoffend at a future point in time. While such instruments are gaining increasing popularity across the country, their use is attracting tremendous controversy. Much of the controversy concerns …

A new method identifies class-specific covariates in multi-class prediction tasks.

This paper elaborates on the validation requirements for rating systems and probabilities of default (PDs) which were introduced with the New Capital Standards (Basel II). We start in Section 2 with some introductory remarks on the topics and approaches that will be discussed later on. Then we have a view on the develo…

New clustering method considers causal fairness to avoid bias.

Point estimation of class prevalences in the presence of data set shift has been a popular research topic for more than two decades. Less attention has been paid to the construction of confidence and prediction intervals for estimates of class prevalences. One little considered question is whether or not it is necessar…

Recidivism prediction instruments (RPI's) provide decision makers with an assessment of the likelihood that a criminal defendant will reoffend at a future point in time. While such instruments are gaining increasing popularity across the country, their use is attracting tremendous controversy. Much of the controversy c…

Recidivism prediction provides decision makers with an assessment of the likelihood that a criminal defendant will reoffend that can be used in pre-trial decision-making. It can also be used for prediction of locations where crimes most occur, profiles that are more likely to commit violent crimes. While such instrumen…

Machine learning (ML) can automate decision-making by learning to predict decisions from historical data. However, these predictors may inherit discriminatory policies from past decisions and reproduce unfair decisions. In this paper, we propose two algorithms that adjust fitted ML predictors to make them fair. We focu…

We find the optimal error for a constrained regression model under a linear model.

Recent attempts to achieve fairness in predictive models focus on the balance between fairness and accuracy. In sensitive applications such as healthcare or criminal justice, this trade-off is often undesirable as any increase in prediction error could have devastating consequences. In this work, we argue that the fair…

Deep neural networks have been developed drawing inspiration from the brain visual pathway, implementing an end-to-end approach: from image data to video object classes. However building an fMRI decoder with the typical structure of Convolutional Neural Network (CNN), i.e. learning multiple level of representations, se…

Machine learning can impact people with legal or ethical consequences when it is used to automate decisions in areas such as insurance, lending, hiring, and predictive policing. In many of these scenarios, previous decisions have been made that are unfairly biased against certain subpopulations, for example those of a …

We evaluate the folk wisdom that algorithmic decision rules trained on data produced by biased human decision-makers necessarily reflect this bias. We consider a setting where training labels are only generated if a biased decision-maker takes a particular action, and so "biased" training data arise due to discriminato…

We study the interplay between sequential decision making and avoiding discrimination against protected groups, when examples arrive online and do not follow distributional assumptions. We consider the most basic extension of classical online learning: "Given a class of predictors that are individually non-discriminato…

Many machine learning systems make extensive use of large amounts of data regarding human behaviors. Several researchers have found various discriminatory practices related to the use of human-related machine learning systems, for example in the field of criminal justice, credit scoring and advertising. Fair machine le…

In this paper, we propose to provide a general ensemble learning framework based on deep learning models. Given a group of unit models, the proposed deep ensemble learning framework will effectively combine their learning results via a multilayered ensemble model. In the case when the unit model mathematical mappings a…

fairadapt uses causal inference to mitigate algorithmic bias in data pre-processing.

Ensuring that classifiers are non-discriminatory or fair with respect to a sensitive feature (e.g., race or gender) is a topical problem. Progress in this task requires fixing a definition of fairness, and there have been several proposals in this regard over the past few years. Several of these, however, assume either…

New algorithm reduces discrimination in predictions.

Paper protects privacy and fairness in deep learning models.

In this study, we employ Generative Adversarial Networks as an oversampling method to generate artificial data to assist with the classification of credit card fraudulent transactions. GANs is a generative model based on the idea of game theory, in which a generator G and a discriminator D are trying to outsmart each o…