Evaluating and Correcting Performative Effects of Decision Support Systems via Causal Domain Shift

Fuente: arXiv
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Autori principali: Boeken, Philip, Zoeter, Onno, Mooij, Joris M.
Natura: Preprint
Pubblicazione: 2024
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author Boeken, Philip
Zoeter, Onno
Mooij, Joris M.
author_facet Boeken, Philip
Zoeter, Onno
Mooij, Joris M.
contents When predicting a target variable $Y$ from features $X$, the prediction $\hat{Y}$ can be performative: an agent might act on this prediction, affecting the value of $Y$ that we eventually observe. Performative predictions are deliberately prevalent in algorithmic decision support, where a Decision Support System (DSS) provides a prediction for an agent to affect the value of the target variable. When deploying a DSS in high-stakes settings (e.g. healthcare, law, predictive policing, or child welfare screening) it is imperative to carefully assess the performative effects of the DSS. In the case that the DSS serves as an alarm for a predicted negative outcome, naive retraining of the prediction model is bound to result in a model that underestimates the risk, due to effective workings of the previous model. In this work, we propose to model the deployment of a DSS as causal domain shift and provide novel cross-domain identification results for the conditional expectation $E[Y | X]$, allowing for pre- and post-hoc assessment of the deployment of the DSS, and for retraining of a model that assesses the risk under a baseline policy where the DSS is not deployed. Using a running example, we empirically show that a repeated regression procedure provides a practical framework for estimating these quantities, even when the data is affected by sample selection bias and selective labelling, offering for a practical, unified solution for multiple forms of target variable bias.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2403_00886
institution arXiv
publishDate 2024
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle Evaluating and Correcting Performative Effects of Decision Support Systems via Causal Domain Shift
Boeken, Philip
Zoeter, Onno
Mooij, Joris M.
Machine Learning
Statistics Theory
When predicting a target variable $Y$ from features $X$, the prediction $\hat{Y}$ can be performative: an agent might act on this prediction, affecting the value of $Y$ that we eventually observe. Performative predictions are deliberately prevalent in algorithmic decision support, where a Decision Support System (DSS) provides a prediction for an agent to affect the value of the target variable. When deploying a DSS in high-stakes settings (e.g. healthcare, law, predictive policing, or child welfare screening) it is imperative to carefully assess the performative effects of the DSS. In the case that the DSS serves as an alarm for a predicted negative outcome, naive retraining of the prediction model is bound to result in a model that underestimates the risk, due to effective workings of the previous model. In this work, we propose to model the deployment of a DSS as causal domain shift and provide novel cross-domain identification results for the conditional expectation $E[Y | X]$, allowing for pre- and post-hoc assessment of the deployment of the DSS, and for retraining of a model that assesses the risk under a baseline policy where the DSS is not deployed. Using a running example, we empirically show that a repeated regression procedure provides a practical framework for estimating these quantities, even when the data is affected by sample selection bias and selective labelling, offering for a practical, unified solution for multiple forms of target variable bias.
title Evaluating and Correcting Performative Effects of Decision Support Systems via Causal Domain Shift
topic Machine Learning
Statistics Theory
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2403.00886