×

Matching code and law: achieving algorithmic fairness with optimal transport. (English) Zbl 1458.68190

Summary: Increasingly, discrimination by algorithms is perceived as a societal and legal problem. As a response, a number of criteria for implementing algorithmic fairness in machine learning have been developed in the literature. This paper proposes the continuous fairness algorithm (CFA\(\theta\)) which enables a continuous interpolation between different fairness definitions. More specifically, we make three main contributions to the existing literature. First, our approach allows the decision maker to continuously vary between specific concepts of individual and group fairness. As a consequence, the algorithm enables the decision maker to adopt intermediate “worldviews” on the degree of discrimination encoded in algorithmic processes, adding nuance to the extreme cases of “we’re all equal” and “what you see is what you get” proposed so far in the literature. Second, we use optimal transport theory, and specifically the concept of the barycenter, to maximize decision maker utility under the chosen fairness constraints. Third, the algorithm is able to handle cases of intersectionality, i.e., of multi-dimensional discrimination of certain groups on grounds of several criteria. We discuss three main examples (credit applications; college admissions; insurance contracts) and map out the legal and policy implications of our approach. The explicit formalization of the trade-off between individual and group fairness allows this post-processing approach to be tailored to different situational contexts in which one or the other fairness criterion may take precedence. Finally, we evaluate our model experimentally.

MSC:

68T05 Learning and adaptive systems in artificial intelligence
49Q22 Optimal transportation
62P25 Applications of statistics to social sciences
91D99 Mathematical sociology (including anthropology)

Software:

GitHub; LETOR; POT

References:

[1] Agueh, M.; Carlier, G., Barycenters in the Wasserstein space, SIAM J Math Anal, 43, 904-924 (2011) · Zbl 1223.49045
[2] Ambrosio, L.; Gigli, N., A user’s guide to optimal transport (2013), Berlin: Springer, Berlin
[3] Ayres, I.; Siegelmann, P., Race and gender discrimination in bargaining for a new car, Am Econ Rev, 85, 304-321 (1995)
[4] Barocas, S.; Selbst, A., Big data’s disparate impact, Calif Law Rev, 104, 671-732 (2016)
[5] Berk R et al (2018) Fairness in criminal justice risk assessments: the state of the art. Sociol Methods Res 1-42
[6] Bent J (2019) Is algorithmic affirmative action legal? Georget. Law J (forthcoming). https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=3372690. Accessed on 19 June 2019
[7] Binns, R., Fairness in machine learning: lessons from political philosophy, J Mach Learn Res, 81, 1-11 (2018)
[8] Brenier, Y., Décomposition polaire et réarrangement monotone des champs de vecteurs, C R Acad Sci Paris, 305, 805-808 (1987) · Zbl 0652.26017
[9] Brenier, Y., Polar factorization and monotone rearrangement of vector-valued functions, Commun Pure Appl Math, 44, 375-417 (1991) · Zbl 0738.46011
[10] Calders T et al (2013) Controlling attribute effect in linear regression. In: 2013 IEEE 13th international conference on data mining, pp 71-80
[11] Calders, T.; Verwer, S., Three naive Bayes approaches for discrimination-free classification, Data Min Knowl Discov, 21, 277-292 (2010)
[12] Calders, T.; Žliobaitė, I.; Custers, T., Why unbiased computational processes can lead to discriminative decision procedures, Discrimination and privacy in the information society, 43-57 (2013), Berlin: Springer, Berlin
[13] Calmon, F., Optimized pre-processing for discrimination prevention, Adv Neural Inf Process Syst, 30, 3995-4004 (2017)
[14] Chen, D., Enhancing transparency and control when drawing data-driven inferences about individuals, Big Data, 5, 197-212 (2017)
[15] Chouldechova, A., Fair prediction with disparate impact: a study of bias in recidivism prediction instruments, Big Data, 5, 153-163 (2017)
[16] Chouldechova A, Roth A (2018) The frontiers of fairness in machine learning. arXiv:1810.08810
[17] Craig, P.; De Búrca, G., EU law (2011), Oxford: Oxford University Press, Oxford · Zbl 1245.00015
[18] Datta, A., Automated experiments on ad privacy settings, Proc Priv Enhan Technol, 1, 92-112 (2015)
[19] del Barrio E et al (2019) Obtaining fairness using optimal transport theory. In: Proceedings of the 36th international conference on machine learning, vol PMLR 97, pp 2357-2365
[20] Dwork C et al (2012) Fairness through awareness. In: Proceedings of the 3rd innovations in theoretical computer science conference, pp 214-226 · Zbl 1348.91230
[21] EEOC (2015) Uniform guidelines on employment selection procedures, 29 C.F.R.§1607
[22] Feldman M et al (2015) Certifying and removing disparate impact. In: Proceedings of the 21th ACM SIGKDD international conference on knowledge discovery and data mining, pp 259-268
[23] Fish B et al (2016) A confidence-based approach for balancing fairness and accuracy. In: Proceedings of the 2016 SIAM international conference on data mining, pp 144-152
[24] Flamary, R, Courty, N (2017) POT python optimal transport library. https://github.com/rflamary/POT. Accessed 1st July 2019
[25] Friedler S et al (2016) On the (im)possibility of fairness. arXiv:1609.07236
[26] Fukuchi, K., Prediction with model-based neutrality, IEICE Trans Inf Syst, E98-D, 8, 1503-1516 (2015)
[27] Fuster A et al (2018) Predictably unequal? The effects of machine learning on credit markets. https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=3072038. Accessed 19 June 2019
[28] German Federal Ministry of Justice (2018) Sachverständigenrat für Verbraucherfragen. Verbrauchergerechtes Scoring, Report
[29] Gillen, S., Online learning with an unknown fairness metric, Adv Neural Inf Process Syst, 32, 2600-2609 (2018)
[30] Guan L et al (2016) From physical to cyber: escalating protection for personalized auto insurance. In: Proceedings of the 14th ACM conference on embedded network sensor systems, pp 42-55
[31] Hacker, Ph, Personal data, exploitative contracts, and algorithmic fairness: autonomous vehicles meet the internet of things, Int Data Priv Law, 7, 266-286 (2017)
[32] Hacker, Ph, Teaching fairness to artificial intelligence: existing and novel strategies against algorithmic discrimination under EU law, Common Mark Law Rev, 55, 1143-1186 (2018)
[33] Hardt, M., Equality of opportunity in supervised learning, Adv Neural Inf Process Syst, 29, 3315-3323 (2016)
[34] Hurley, M.; Adebayo, J., Credit scoring in the era of big data, Yale JL Tech, 18, 148-216 (2016)
[35] Järvelin, K.; Kekäläinen, J., Cumulated gain-based evaluation of IR techniques, ACM Trans Inf Syst, 20, 422-446 (2002)
[36] Johndrow, J.; Lum, K., An algorithm for removing sensitive information: application to race-independent recidivism prediction, Ann Appl Stat, 13, 189-220 (2019) · Zbl 1417.62352
[37] Joseph, M., Fairness in learning: classic and contextual bandits, Adv Neural Inf Process Syst, 29, 325-333 (2016)
[38] Kamishima, T., Recommendation independence, Proc Mach Learn Res, 81, 1-15 (2018)
[39] Kim, P., Auditing algorithms for discrimination, Univ PA Law Rev Online, 166, 189-203 (2017)
[40] Kleinberg J et al (2016) Inherent trade-offs in the fair determination of risk scores. arXiv:1609.05807 · Zbl 1402.68156
[41] Kleinberg, Jon; Ludwig, Jens; Mullainathan, Sendhil; Rambachan, Ashesh, Algorithmic Fairness, AEA Papers and Proceedings, 108, 22-27 (2018)
[42] Kroll, Ja, Accountable algorithms, Univ Pa Law Rev, 165, 633-705 (2017)
[43] Lowry, S.; Macpherson, G., A blot on the profession, Br Med J, 296, 657-658 (1988)
[44] Malamud, D., The strange persistence of affirmative action under title VII, West Va Law Rev, 118, 1-22 (2015)
[45] Moses, M., Living with moral disagreement: the enduring controversy about affirmative action (2016), Chicago: University of Chicago Press, Chicago
[46] Naibandian, J.; Broadnax, W., The US Supreme Court’s “consensus” on affirmative action, Diversity and affirmative action in public service, 111-125 (2010), Boulder: Westview Press, Boulder
[47] Pasquale, F., The black box society. The secret algorithms. That control money and information (2015), Cambridge: Harvard University Press, Cambridge
[48] Pérez-Suay, Adrián; Laparra, Valero; Mateo-García, Gonzalo; Muñoz-Marí, Jordi; Gómez-Chova, Luis; Camps-Valls, Gustau, Fair Kernel Learning, Machine Learning and Knowledge Discovery in Databases, 339-355 (2017), Cham: Springer International Publishing, Cham
[49] Poueymirou, M., Schuette v. coalition to defend affirmative action and the death of the political process doctrine, UC Irvine Law Rev, 7, 167-194 (2017)
[50] Qin, T., LETOR: a benchmark collection for research on learning to rank for information retrieval, Inf Retr, 13, 346-374 (2010)
[51] Reed Ch et al (2016) Responsibility, autonomy and accountability: legal liability for machine learning. Queen Mary School of Law Legal Studies Research Paper No. 243/2016, https://ssrn.com/abstract=2853462. Accessed 19 June 2019
[52] Reuters (2018) Amazon ditched AI recruiting tool that favored men for technical jobs, The Guardian (11 October 2018). https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2018/oct/10/amazon-hiring-ai-gender-bias-recruiting-engine. Accessed 19 June 2019
[53] Robinson, K., Fisher’s cautionary tale and the urgent need for equal access to an excellent education, Harv Law Rev, 130, 185-240 (2016)
[54] Romei, A.; Ruggieri, S., A multidisciplinary survey on discrimination analysis, Knowl Eng Rev, 29, 582-638 (2014)
[55] Rothmann R et al (2014) Credit Scoring in Oesterreich, Report of the Austrian Academy of Sciences
[56] Selbst, A., Disparate impact in big data policing, Georg Law Rev, 52, 109-195 (2017)
[57] Sullivan, C., Disparate impact: looking past the desert palace mirage, William Mary Law Rev, 47, 911-1002 (2005)
[58] Tobler, C., Indirect discrimination (2005), Cambridge: Intersentia, Cambridge
[59] Tobler, Ch, Case C-236/09, Association belge des Consommateurs Test-Achats ASBL, Yann van Vugt, Charles Basselier v. Conseil des ministres, Judgment of the Court of Justice (Grand Chamber) of 1 March 2011, Common Mark Law Rev, 48, 2041-2060 (2011)
[60] Tutt, A., An FDA for algorithms, Adm Law Rev, 69, 83-125 (2017)
[61] Veale M, Binns R (2017) Fairer machine learning in the real world: mitigating discrimination without collecting sensitive data. Big Data Soc July-December:1-17
[62] Wachter, S., Why a right to explanation of automated decision-making does not exist in the general data protection regulation, Int Data Priv Law, 7, 76-99 (2017)
[63] Waddington, L.; Bell, M., More equal than others: distinguishing European Union equality directives, Common Mark Law Rev, 38, 587-611 (2001)
[64] Wightman L (1998) LSAC national longitudinal bar passage study, LSAC research report series
[65] Yang K et al (2018) A nutritional label for rankings. In: Proceedings of the 2018 international conference on management of data, vol 18, pp 1773-1776
[66] Zafar, M., Fairness constraints: mechanisms for fair classification, Artif Intell Stat, 20, 962-970 (2017)
[67] Zehlike M et al (2017) FA*IR: a fair top-k ranking algorithm. In: 26th ACM international conference on information and knowledge management, pp 1569-1578
[68] Zemel R et al (2013) Learning fair representations. In: Proceedings of the 30th international conference on machine learning, pp 325-333
[69] Žliobaitė I (2015) On the relation between accuracy and fairness in binary classification. FATML 2015
[70] Žliobaitė, I., Measuring discrimination in algorithmic decision making, Data Min Knowl Discov, 31, 1060-1089 (2017)
This reference list is based on information provided by the publisher or from digital mathematics libraries. Its items are heuristically matched to zbMATH identifiers and may contain data conversion errors. In some cases that data have been complemented/enhanced by data from zbMATH Open. This attempts to reflect the references listed in the original paper as accurately as possible without claiming completeness or a perfect matching.