BLADE: Bias-Linked Adaptive DEbiasing

Fuente: arXiv
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Autores principales: Arora, Piyush, Singh, Navlika, Diwan, Vasubhya, Mazumder, Pratik
Formato: Preprint
Publicado: 2025
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author Arora, Piyush
Singh, Navlika
Diwan, Vasubhya
Mazumder, Pratik
author_facet Arora, Piyush
Singh, Navlika
Diwan, Vasubhya
Mazumder, Pratik
contents Neural networks have revolutionized numerous fields, yet they remain vulnerable to a critical flaw: the tendency to learn implicit biases, spurious correlations between certain attributes and target labels in training data. These biases are often more prevalent and easier to learn, causing models to rely on superficial patterns rather than task-relevant features necessary for generalization. Existing methods typically rely on strong assumptions, such as prior knowledge of these biases or access to bias-conflicting samples, i.e., samples that contradict spurious correlations and counterbalance bias-aligned samples, samples that conform to these spurious correlations. However, such assumptions are often impractical in real-world settings. We propose BLADE ({B}ias-{L}inked {A}daptive {DE}biasing), a generative debiasing framework that requires no prior knowledge of bias or bias-conflicting samples. BLADE first trains a generative model to translate images across bias domains while preserving task-relevant features. Then, it adaptively refines each image with its synthetic counterpart based on the image's susceptibility to bias. To encourage robust representations, BLADE aligns an image with its bias-translated synthetic counterpart that shares task-relevant features but differs in bias, while misaligning it with samples sharing the same bias. We evaluate BLADE on multiple benchmark datasets and show that it significantly outperforms state-of-the-art methods. Notably, it exceeds the closest baseline by an absolute margin of around 18% on the corrupted CIFAR-10 dataset under the worst group setting, establishing a new benchmark in bias mitigation and demonstrating its potential for developing more robust deep learning models without explicit supervision.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2510_04174
institution arXiv
publishDate 2025
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle BLADE: Bias-Linked Adaptive DEbiasing
Arora, Piyush
Singh, Navlika
Diwan, Vasubhya
Mazumder, Pratik
Computer Vision and Pattern Recognition
Neural networks have revolutionized numerous fields, yet they remain vulnerable to a critical flaw: the tendency to learn implicit biases, spurious correlations between certain attributes and target labels in training data. These biases are often more prevalent and easier to learn, causing models to rely on superficial patterns rather than task-relevant features necessary for generalization. Existing methods typically rely on strong assumptions, such as prior knowledge of these biases or access to bias-conflicting samples, i.e., samples that contradict spurious correlations and counterbalance bias-aligned samples, samples that conform to these spurious correlations. However, such assumptions are often impractical in real-world settings. We propose BLADE ({B}ias-{L}inked {A}daptive {DE}biasing), a generative debiasing framework that requires no prior knowledge of bias or bias-conflicting samples. BLADE first trains a generative model to translate images across bias domains while preserving task-relevant features. Then, it adaptively refines each image with its synthetic counterpart based on the image's susceptibility to bias. To encourage robust representations, BLADE aligns an image with its bias-translated synthetic counterpart that shares task-relevant features but differs in bias, while misaligning it with samples sharing the same bias. We evaluate BLADE on multiple benchmark datasets and show that it significantly outperforms state-of-the-art methods. Notably, it exceeds the closest baseline by an absolute margin of around 18% on the corrupted CIFAR-10 dataset under the worst group setting, establishing a new benchmark in bias mitigation and demonstrating its potential for developing more robust deep learning models without explicit supervision.
title BLADE: Bias-Linked Adaptive DEbiasing
topic Computer Vision and Pattern Recognition
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2510.04174