TowerDebias: A Novel Unfairness Removal Method Based on the Tower Property

Fuente: arXiv
Saved in:
Bibliographic Details
Main Authors: Matloff, Norman, Mittal, Aditya
Format: Preprint
Published: 2024
Subjects:
Online Access:
Tags: Add Tag
No Tags, Be the first to tag this record!
_version_ 1866917975462772736
author Matloff, Norman
Mittal, Aditya
author_facet Matloff, Norman
Mittal, Aditya
contents Decision-making processes have increasingly come to rely on sophisticated machine learning tools, raising critical concerns about the fairness of their predictions with respect to sensitive groups. The widespread adoption of commercial "black-box" models necessitates careful consideration of their legal and ethical implications for consumers. When users interact with such black-box models, a key challenge arises: how can the influence of sensitive attributes, such as race or gender, be mitigated or removed from its predictions? We propose towerDebias (tDB), a novel post-processing method designed to reduce the influence of sensitive attributes in predictions made by black-box models. Our tDB approach leverages the Tower Property from probability theory to improve prediction fairness without requiring retraining of the original model. This method is highly versatile, as it requires no prior knowledge of the original algorithm's internal structure and is adaptable to a diverse range of applications. We present a formal fairness improvement theorem for tDB and showcase its effectiveness in both regression and classification tasks using multiple real-world datasets.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2411_08297
institution arXiv
publishDate 2024
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle TowerDebias: A Novel Unfairness Removal Method Based on the Tower Property
Matloff, Norman
Mittal, Aditya
Machine Learning
Artificial Intelligence
Probability
Applications
Decision-making processes have increasingly come to rely on sophisticated machine learning tools, raising critical concerns about the fairness of their predictions with respect to sensitive groups. The widespread adoption of commercial "black-box" models necessitates careful consideration of their legal and ethical implications for consumers. When users interact with such black-box models, a key challenge arises: how can the influence of sensitive attributes, such as race or gender, be mitigated or removed from its predictions? We propose towerDebias (tDB), a novel post-processing method designed to reduce the influence of sensitive attributes in predictions made by black-box models. Our tDB approach leverages the Tower Property from probability theory to improve prediction fairness without requiring retraining of the original model. This method is highly versatile, as it requires no prior knowledge of the original algorithm's internal structure and is adaptable to a diverse range of applications. We present a formal fairness improvement theorem for tDB and showcase its effectiveness in both regression and classification tasks using multiple real-world datasets.
title TowerDebias: A Novel Unfairness Removal Method Based on the Tower Property
topic Machine Learning
Artificial Intelligence
Probability
Applications
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2411.08297