Unfair Utilities and First Steps Towards Improving Them

Fuente: arXiv
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Hauptverfasser: Jørgensen, Frederik Hytting, Weichwald, Sebastian, Peters, Jonas
Format: Preprint
Veröffentlicht: 2023
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author Jørgensen, Frederik Hytting
Weichwald, Sebastian
Peters, Jonas
author_facet Jørgensen, Frederik Hytting
Weichwald, Sebastian
Peters, Jonas
contents Many fairness criteria constrain the policy or choice of predictors, which can have unwanted consequences, in particular, when optimizing the policy under such constraints. Here, we advocate to instead focus on the utility function the policy is optimizing for. We define value of information fairness and propose to not use utility functions that violate this criterion. This principle suggests to modify these utility functions such that they satisfy value of information fairness. We describe how this can be done and discuss consequences for the corresponding optimal policies. We apply our framework to thought experiments and the COMPAS data. Focussing on the utility function provides better answers than existing fairness notions: We are not aware of any intuitively fair policy that is disallowed by value of information fairness, and when we find that value of information fairness recommends an intuitively unfair policy, no existing fairness notion finds an intuitively fair policy.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2306_00636
institution arXiv
publishDate 2023
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle Unfair Utilities and First Steps Towards Improving Them
Jørgensen, Frederik Hytting
Weichwald, Sebastian
Peters, Jonas
Machine Learning
Computers and Society
Many fairness criteria constrain the policy or choice of predictors, which can have unwanted consequences, in particular, when optimizing the policy under such constraints. Here, we advocate to instead focus on the utility function the policy is optimizing for. We define value of information fairness and propose to not use utility functions that violate this criterion. This principle suggests to modify these utility functions such that they satisfy value of information fairness. We describe how this can be done and discuss consequences for the corresponding optimal policies. We apply our framework to thought experiments and the COMPAS data. Focussing on the utility function provides better answers than existing fairness notions: We are not aware of any intuitively fair policy that is disallowed by value of information fairness, and when we find that value of information fairness recommends an intuitively unfair policy, no existing fairness notion finds an intuitively fair policy.
title Unfair Utilities and First Steps Towards Improving Them
topic Machine Learning
Computers and Society
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2306.00636