The Double-Edged Sword of Behavioral Responses in Strategic Classification: Theory and User Studies

Fuente: arXiv
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Auteurs principaux: Ebrahimi, Raman, Vaccaro, Kristen, Naghizadeh, Parinaz
Format: Preprint
Publié: 2024
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author Ebrahimi, Raman
Vaccaro, Kristen
Naghizadeh, Parinaz
author_facet Ebrahimi, Raman
Vaccaro, Kristen
Naghizadeh, Parinaz
contents When humans are subject to an algorithmic decision system, they can strategically adjust their behavior accordingly (``game'' the system). While a growing line of literature on strategic classification has used game-theoretic modeling to understand and mitigate such gaming, these existing works consider standard models of fully rational agents. In this paper, we propose a strategic classification model that considers behavioral biases in human responses to algorithms. We show how misperceptions of a classifier (specifically, of its feature weights) can lead to different types of discrepancies between biased and rational agents' responses, and identify when behavioral agents over- or under-invest in different features. We also show that strategic agents with behavioral biases can benefit or (perhaps, unexpectedly) harm the firm compared to fully rational strategic agents. We complement our analytical results with user studies, which support our hypothesis of behavioral biases in human responses to the algorithm. Together, our findings highlight the need to account for human (cognitive) biases when designing AI systems, and providing explanations of them, to strategic human in the loop.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2410_18066
institution arXiv
publishDate 2024
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle The Double-Edged Sword of Behavioral Responses in Strategic Classification: Theory and User Studies
Ebrahimi, Raman
Vaccaro, Kristen
Naghizadeh, Parinaz
Machine Learning
Computer Science and Game Theory
Human-Computer Interaction
When humans are subject to an algorithmic decision system, they can strategically adjust their behavior accordingly (``game'' the system). While a growing line of literature on strategic classification has used game-theoretic modeling to understand and mitigate such gaming, these existing works consider standard models of fully rational agents. In this paper, we propose a strategic classification model that considers behavioral biases in human responses to algorithms. We show how misperceptions of a classifier (specifically, of its feature weights) can lead to different types of discrepancies between biased and rational agents' responses, and identify when behavioral agents over- or under-invest in different features. We also show that strategic agents with behavioral biases can benefit or (perhaps, unexpectedly) harm the firm compared to fully rational strategic agents. We complement our analytical results with user studies, which support our hypothesis of behavioral biases in human responses to the algorithm. Together, our findings highlight the need to account for human (cognitive) biases when designing AI systems, and providing explanations of them, to strategic human in the loop.
title The Double-Edged Sword of Behavioral Responses in Strategic Classification: Theory and User Studies
topic Machine Learning
Computer Science and Game Theory
Human-Computer Interaction
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2410.18066