论文标题
公平性可传递性约有有限的分配变化
Fairness Transferability Subject to Bounded Distribution Shift
论文作者
论文摘要
给定在某些源分布上“公平”的算法预测指标,在未知目标分布上与某些界限内有所不同的未知目标分布仍然公平吗?在本文中,我们研究了统计组公平性在机器学习预测因子(即分类器或回归器)的可转移性,但会受到有限分配变化的影响。可以通过初始培训数据不确定性,对部署的预测因子的用户适应,动态环境或在新设置中使用预训练的模型来引入这种转变。在本文中,我们开发了一种特征,其特征是可转移性,并标记了机器学习的潜在不适当的部署,以解决社会上的任务。我们首先开发一个框架,以限制违反统计公平性的行为,但要出于分配转移而制定,为我们的主要结果制定了通用的上限,以作为我们的主要结果。然后,我们为特定工作示例开发界限,重点介绍两个常用的公平定义(即人口统计学奇偶校验和均衡赔率)和两个分配变化(即协变量移动和标签移动)。最后,我们将我们的理论界限与分配转移的确定性模型和与现实世界的数据进行了比较,发现我们能够在实践中估计违反公平性违规范围,即使只有简化的假设才能近似满足。
Given an algorithmic predictor that is "fair" on some source distribution, will it still be fair on an unknown target distribution that differs from the source within some bound? In this paper, we study the transferability of statistical group fairness for machine learning predictors (i.e., classifiers or regressors) subject to bounded distribution shifts. Such shifts may be introduced by initial training data uncertainties, user adaptation to a deployed predictor, dynamic environments, or the use of pre-trained models in new settings. Herein, we develop a bound that characterizes such transferability, flagging potentially inappropriate deployments of machine learning for socially consequential tasks. We first develop a framework for bounding violations of statistical fairness subject to distribution shift, formulating a generic upper bound for transferred fairness violations as our primary result. We then develop bounds for specific worked examples, focusing on two commonly used fairness definitions (i.e., demographic parity and equalized odds) and two classes of distribution shift (i.e., covariate shift and label shift). Finally, we compare our theoretical bounds to deterministic models of distribution shift and against real-world data, finding that we are able to estimate fairness violation bounds in practice, even when simplifying assumptions are only approximately satisfied.