Mitigating Dual Latent Confounding Biases in Recommender Systems

Fuente: arXiv
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Main Authors: Deng, Jianfeng, Chen, Qingfeng, Cheng, Debo, Li, Jiuyong, Liu, Lin, Du, Xiaojing
Format: Preprint
Published: 2024
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author Deng, Jianfeng
Chen, Qingfeng
Cheng, Debo
Li, Jiuyong
Liu, Lin
Du, Xiaojing
author_facet Deng, Jianfeng
Chen, Qingfeng
Cheng, Debo
Li, Jiuyong
Liu, Lin
Du, Xiaojing
contents Recommender systems are extensively utilised across various areas to predict user preferences for personalised experiences and enhanced user engagement and satisfaction. Traditional recommender systems, however, are complicated by confounding bias, particularly in the presence of latent confounders that affect both item exposure and user feedback. Existing debiasing methods often fail to capture the complex interactions caused by latent confounders in interaction data, especially when dual latent confounders affect both the user and item sides. To address this, we propose a novel debiasing method that jointly integrates the Instrumental Variables (IV) approach and identifiable Variational Auto-Encoder (iVAE) for Debiased representation learning in Recommendation systems, referred to as IViDR. Specifically, IViDR leverages the embeddings of user features as IVs to address confounding bias caused by latent confounders between items and user feedback, and reconstructs the embedding of items to obtain debiased interaction data. Moreover, IViDR employs an Identifiable Variational Auto-Encoder (iVAE) to infer identifiable representations of latent confounders between item exposure and user feedback from both the original and debiased interaction data. Additionally, we provide theoretical analyses of the soundness of using IV and the identifiability of the latent representations. Extensive experiments on both synthetic and real-world datasets demonstrate that IViDR outperforms state-of-the-art models in reducing bias and providing reliable recommendations.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2410_12451
institution arXiv
publishDate 2024
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle Mitigating Dual Latent Confounding Biases in Recommender Systems
Deng, Jianfeng
Chen, Qingfeng
Cheng, Debo
Li, Jiuyong
Liu, Lin
Du, Xiaojing
Information Retrieval
Recommender systems are extensively utilised across various areas to predict user preferences for personalised experiences and enhanced user engagement and satisfaction. Traditional recommender systems, however, are complicated by confounding bias, particularly in the presence of latent confounders that affect both item exposure and user feedback. Existing debiasing methods often fail to capture the complex interactions caused by latent confounders in interaction data, especially when dual latent confounders affect both the user and item sides. To address this, we propose a novel debiasing method that jointly integrates the Instrumental Variables (IV) approach and identifiable Variational Auto-Encoder (iVAE) for Debiased representation learning in Recommendation systems, referred to as IViDR. Specifically, IViDR leverages the embeddings of user features as IVs to address confounding bias caused by latent confounders between items and user feedback, and reconstructs the embedding of items to obtain debiased interaction data. Moreover, IViDR employs an Identifiable Variational Auto-Encoder (iVAE) to infer identifiable representations of latent confounders between item exposure and user feedback from both the original and debiased interaction data. Additionally, we provide theoretical analyses of the soundness of using IV and the identifiability of the latent representations. Extensive experiments on both synthetic and real-world datasets demonstrate that IViDR outperforms state-of-the-art models in reducing bias and providing reliable recommendations.
title Mitigating Dual Latent Confounding Biases in Recommender Systems
topic Information Retrieval
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2410.12451