We propose a learning algorithm for fair classification that achieves both group fairness (the proportion of members in a protected group receiving positive classification is identical to the proportion in the population as a whole), and individual fairness (similar individuals should be treated similarly). We formulate fairness as an optimization problem of finding a good representation of the data with two competing goals: to encode the data as well as possible, while simultaneously obfuscating any information about membership in the protected group. We show positive results of our algorithm relative to other known techniques, on three datasets. Moreover, we demonstrate several advantages to our approach. First, our intermediate representation can be used for other classification tasks (i.e., transfer learning is possible); secondly, we take a step toward learning a distance metric which can find important dimensions of the data for classification.

We study fairness in classification, where individuals are classified, e.g., admitted to a university, and the goal is to prevent discrimination against individuals based on their membership in some group, while maintaining utility for the classifier (the university). The main conceptual contribution of this paper is a framework for fair classification comprising (1) a (hypothetical) task-specific metric for determining the degree to which individuals are similar with respect to the classification task at hand; (2) an algorithm for maximizing utility subject to the fairness constraint, that similar individuals are treated similarly. We also present an adaptation of our approach to achieve the complementary goal of "fair affirmative action," which guarantees statistical parity (i.e., the demographics of the set of individuals receiving any classification are the same as the demographics of the underlying population), while treating similar individuals as similarly as possible. Finally, we discuss the relationship of fairness to privacy: when fairness implies privacy, and how tools developed in the context of differential privacy may be applied to fairness.

What does it mean for an algorithm to be biased? In U.S. law, unintentional bias is encoded via disparate impact, which occurs when a selection process has widely different outcomes for different groups, even as it appears to be neutral. This legal determination hinges on a definition of a protected class (ethnicity, gender) and an explicit description of the process.When computers are involved, determining disparate impact (and hence bias) is harder. It might not be possible to disclose the process. In addition, even if the process is open, it might be hard to elucidate in a legal setting how the algorithm makes its decisions. Instead of requiring access to the process, we propose making inferences based on the data it uses.We present four contributions. First, we link disparate impact to a measure of classification accuracy that while known, has received relatively little attention. Second, we propose a test for disparate impact based on how well the protected class can be predicted from the other attributes. Third, we describe methods by which data might be made unbiased. Finally, we present empirical evidence supporting the effectiveness of our test for disparate impact and our approach for both masking bias and preserving relevant information in the data. Interestingly, our approach resembles some actual selection practices that have recently received legal scrutiny.

为了减轻模型中不希望的偏差的影响，几种方法建议预先处理输入数据集，以通过防止敏感属性的推断来减少歧视风险。不幸的是，这些预处理方法中的大多数导致一代新分布与原始分布有很大不同，因此通常导致不切实际的数据。作为副作用，这种新的数据分布意味着需要重新训练现有模型才能做出准确的预测。为了解决这个问题，我们提出了一种新颖的预处理方法，我们将根据保护组的分布转换为所选目标一个，并具有附加的隐私约束，其目的是防止敏感敏感的推断属性。更确切地说，我们利用Wasserstein Gan和Attgan框架的最新作品来实现数据点的最佳运输以及强制保护属性推断的歧视器。我们提出的方法可以保留数据的可解释性，并且可以在不定义敏感组的情况下使用。此外，我们的方法可以专门建模现有的最新方法，从而提出对这些方法的统一观点。最后，关于真实和合成数据集的一些实验表明，我们的方法能够隐藏敏感属性，同时限制数据的变形并改善了后续数据分析任务的公平性。

自几十年前以来，已经证明了机器学习评估贷款申请人信誉的实用性。但是，自动决策可能会导致对群体或个人的不同治疗方法，可能导致歧视。本文基准了12种最大的偏见缓解方法，讨论其绩效，该绩效基于5个不同的公平指标，获得的准确性以及为金融机构提供的潜在利润。我们的发现表明，在确保准确性和利润的同时，实现公平性方面的困难。此外，它突出了一些表现最好和最差的人，并有助于弥合实验机学习及其工业应用之间的差距。

机器学习模型在高赌注应用中变得普遍存在。尽管在绩效方面有明显的效益，但该模型可以表现出对少数民族群体的偏见，并导致决策过程中的公平问题，导致对个人和社会的严重负面影响。近年来，已经开发了各种技术来减轻机器学习模型的偏差。其中，加工方法已经增加了社区的关注，在模型设计期间直接考虑公平，以诱导本质上公平的模型，从根本上减轻了产出和陈述中的公平问题。在本调查中，我们审查了加工偏置减缓技术的当前进展。基于在模型中实现公平的地方，我们将它们分类为明确和隐性的方法，前者直接在培训目标中纳入公平度量，后者重点介绍精炼潜在代表学习。最后，我们在讨论该社区中的研究挑战来讨论调查，以激励未来的探索。

Non-discrimination is a recognized objective in algorithmic decision making. In this paper, we introduce a novel probabilistic formulation of data pre-processing for reducing discrimination. We propose a convex optimization for learning a data transformation with three goals: controlling discrimination, limiting distortion in individual data samples, and preserving utility. We characterize the impact of limited sample size in accomplishing this objective. Two instances of the proposed optimization are applied to datasets, including one on real-world criminal recidivism. Results show that discrimination can be greatly reduced at a small cost in classification accuracy.

机器学习（ML）在渲染影响社会各个群体的决策中起着越来越重要的作用。 ML模型为刑事司法的决定，银行业中的信贷延长以及公司的招聘做法提供了信息。这提出了模型公平性的要求，这表明自动化的决策对于受保护特征（例如，性别，种族或年龄）通常是公平的，这些特征通常在数据中代表性不足。我们假设这个代表性不足的问题是数据学习不平衡问题的必然性。此类不平衡通常反映在两个类别和受保护的功能中。例如，一个班级（那些获得信用的班级）对于另一个班级（未获得信用的人）可能会过分代表，而特定组（女性）（女性）的代表性可能与另一组（男性）有关。相对于受保护组的算法公平性的关键要素是同时减少了基础培训数据中的类和受保护的群体失衡，这促进了模型准确性和公平性的提高。我们通过展示这些领域中的关键概念如何重叠和相互补充，讨论弥合失衡学习和群体公平的重要性；并提出了一种新颖的过采样算法，即公平的过采样，该算法既解决偏斜的类别分布和受保护的特征。我们的方法：（i）可以用作标准ML算法的有效预处理算法，以共同解决不平衡和群体权益； （ii）可以与公平感知的学习算法结合使用，以提高其对不同水平不平衡水平的稳健性。此外，我们迈出了一步，将公平和不平衡学习之间的差距与新的公平实用程序之间的差距弥合，从而将平衡的准确性与公平性结合在一起。

作为一种预测模型的评分系统具有可解释性和透明度的显着优势，并有助于快速决策。因此，评分系统已广泛用于各种行业，如医疗保健和刑事司法。然而，这些模型中的公平问题长期以来一直受到批评，并且使用大数据和机器学习算法在评分系统的构建中提高了这个问题。在本文中，我们提出了一般框架来创建公平知识，数据驱动评分系统。首先，我们开发一个社会福利功能，融入了效率和群体公平。然后，我们将社会福利最大化问题转换为机器学习中的风险最小化任务，并在混合整数编程的帮助下导出了公平感知评分系统。最后，导出了几种理论界限用于提供参数选择建议。我们拟议的框架提供了适当的解决方案，以解决进程中的分组公平问题。它使政策制定者能够设置和定制其所需的公平要求以及其他特定于应用程序的约束。我们用几个经验数据集测试所提出的算法。实验证据支持拟议的评分制度在实现利益攸关方的最佳福利以及平衡可解释性，公平性和效率的需求方面的有效性。

算法决策的兴起催生了许多关于公平机器学习（ML）的研究。金融机构使用ML来建立支持一系列与信贷有关的决定的风险记分卡。然而，关于信用评分的公平ML的文献很少。该论文做出了三项贡献。首先，我们重新审视统计公平标准，并检查其对信用评分的适当性。其次，我们对将公平目标纳入ML模型开发管道中的算法选项进行了分类。最后，我们从经验上比较了使用现实世界数据以利润为导向的信用评分上下文中的不同公平处理器。经验结果证实了对公平措施的评估，确定了实施公平信用评分的合适选择，并阐明了贷款决策中的利润权衡。我们发现，可以立即达到多个公平标准，并建议分离作为衡量记分卡的公平性的适当标准。我们还发现公平的过程中，可以在利润和公平之间实现良好的平衡，并表明算法歧视可以以相对较低的成本降低到合理的水平。与该论文相对应的代码可在GitHub上获得。

公平性是确保机器学习（ML）预测系统不会歧视特定个人或整个子人群（尤其是少数族裔）的重要要求。鉴于观察公平概念的固有主观性，文献中已经引入了几种公平概念。本文是一项调查，说明了通过大量示例和场景之间的公平概念之间的微妙之处。此外，与文献中的其他调查不同，它解决了以下问题：哪种公平概念最适合给定的现实世界情景，为什么？我们试图回答这个问题的尝试包括（1）确定手头现实世界情景的一组与公平相关的特征，（2）分析每个公平概念的行为，然后（3）适合这两个元素以推荐每个特定设置中最合适的公平概念。结果总结在决策图中可以由从业者和政策制定者使用，以导航相对较大的ML目录。

Algorithmic fairness is becoming increasingly important in data mining and machine learning. Among others, a foundational notation is group fairness. The vast majority of the existing works on group fairness, with a few exceptions, primarily focus on debiasing with respect to a single sensitive attribute, despite the fact that the co-existence of multiple sensitive attributes (e.g., gender, race, marital status, etc.) in the real-world is commonplace. As such, methods that can ensure a fair learning outcome with respect to all sensitive attributes of concern simultaneously need to be developed. In this paper, we study the problem of information-theoretic intersectional fairness (InfoFair), where statistical parity, a representative group fairness measure, is guaranteed among demographic groups formed by multiple sensitive attributes of interest. We formulate it as a mutual information minimization problem and propose a generic end-to-end algorithmic framework to solve it. The key idea is to leverage a variational representation of mutual information, which considers the variational distribution between learning outcomes and sensitive attributes, as well as the density ratio between the variational and the original distributions. Our proposed framework is generalizable to many different settings, including other statistical notions of fairness, and could handle any type of learning task equipped with a gradient-based optimizer. Empirical evaluations in the fair classification task on three real-world datasets demonstrate that our proposed framework can effectively debias the classification results with minimal impact to the classification accuracy.

Algorithmic decision making systems are ubiquitous across a wide variety of online as well as offline services. These systems rely on complex learning methods and vast amounts of data to optimize the service functionality, satisfaction of the end user and profitability. However, there is a growing concern that these automated decisions can lead, even in the absence of intent, to a lack of fairness, i.e., their outcomes can disproportionately hurt (or, benefit) particular groups of people sharing one or more sensitive attributes (e.g., race, sex). In this paper, we introduce a flexible mechanism to design fair classifiers by leveraging a novel intuitive measure of decision boundary (un)fairness. We instantiate this mechanism with two well-known classifiers, logistic regression and support vector machines, and show on real-world data that our mechanism allows for a fine-grained control on the degree of fairness, often at a small cost in terms of accuracy. A Python implementation of our mechanism is available at fate-computing.mpi-sws.org

We propose a criterion for discrimination against a specified sensitive attribute in supervised learning, where the goal is to predict some target based on available features. Assuming data about the predictor, target, and membership in the protected group are available, we show how to optimally adjust any learned predictor so as to remove discrimination according to our definition. Our framework also improves incentives by shifting the cost of poor classification from disadvantaged groups to the decision maker, who can respond by improving the classification accuracy.In line with other studies, our notion is oblivious: it depends only on the joint statistics of the predictor, the target and the protected attribute, but not on interpretation of individual features. We study the inherent limits of defining and identifying biases based on such oblivious measures, outlining what can and cannot be inferred from different oblivious tests.We illustrate our notion using a case study of FICO credit scores.

近年来，解决机器学习公平性（ML）和自动决策的问题引起了处理人工智能的科学社区的大量关注。已经提出了ML中的公平定义的一种不同的定义，认为不同概念是影响人口中个人的“公平决定”的不同概念。这些概念之间的精确差异，含义和“正交性”尚未在文献中完全分析。在这项工作中，我们试图在这个解释中汲取一些订单。

尽管机器学习模式的发展迅速和巨大成功，但广泛的研究暴露了继承潜在歧视和培训数据的社会偏见的缺点。这种现象阻碍了他们在高利益应用上采用。因此，已经采取了许多努力开发公平机器学习模型。其中大多数要求在培训期间提供敏感属性以学习公平的模型。然而，在许多现实世界应用中，由于隐私或法律问题，获得敏感的属性通常是不可行的，这挑战了现有的公平策略。虽然每个数据样本的敏感属性未知，但我们观察到训练数据中通常存在一些与敏感属性高度相关的非敏感功能，这可以用于缓解偏差。因此，在本文中，我们研究了一种探索与学习公平和准确分类器的敏感属性高度相关的特征的新问题。理论上我们通过最小化这些相关特征与模型预测之间的相关性，我们可以学习一个公平的分类器。基于这种动机，我们提出了一种新颖的框架，该框架同时使用这些相关的特征来准确预测和执行公平性。此外，该模型可以动态调整每个相关功能的正则化权重，以平衡其对模型分类和公平性的贡献。现实世界数据集的实验结果证明了拟议模型用于学习公平模型的效力，具有高分类准确性。

分类，一种重大研究的数据驱动机器学习任务，驱动越来越多的预测系统，涉及批准的人类决策，如贷款批准和犯罪风险评估。然而，分类器经常展示歧视性行为，特别是当呈现有偏置数据时。因此，分类公平已经成为一个高优先级的研究区。数据管理研究显示与数据和算法公平有关的主题的增加和兴趣，包括公平分类的主题。公平分类的跨学科努力，具有最大存在的机器学习研究，导致大量的公平概念和尚未系统地评估和比较的广泛方法。在本文中，我们对13个公平分类方法和额外变种的广泛分析，超越，公平，公平，效率，可扩展性，对数据误差的鲁棒性，对潜在的ML模型，数据效率和使用各种指标的稳定性的敏感性和稳定性现实世界数据集。我们的分析突出了对不同指标的影响的新颖见解和高级方法特征对不同方面的性能方面。我们还讨论了选择适合不同实际设置的方法的一般原则，并确定以数据管理为中心的解决方案可能产生最大影响的区域。

住院患者的高血糖治疗对发病率和死亡率都有重大影响。这项研究使用了大型临床数据库来预测需要住院的糖尿病患者的需求，这可能会改善患者的安全性。但是，这些预测可能容易受到社会决定因素（例如种族，年龄和性别）造成的健康差异的影响。这些偏见必须在数据收集过程的早期，在进入系统之前就可以消除，并通过模型预测加强，从而导致模型决策的偏见。在本文中，我们提出了一条能够做出预测以及检测和减轻偏见的机器学习管道。该管道分析了临床数据，确定是否存在偏见，将其删除，然后做出预测。我们使用实验证明了模型预测中的分类准确性和公平性。结果表明，当我们在模型早期减轻偏见时，我们会得到更公平的预测。我们还发现，随着我们获得更好的公平性，我们牺牲了一定程度的准确性，这在先前的研究中也得到了验证。我们邀请研究界为确定可以通过本管道解决的其他因素做出贡献。

With the spread of data mining technologies and the accumulation of social data, such technologies and data are being used for determinations that seriously affect individuals' lives. For example, credit scoring is frequently determined based on the records of past credit data together with statistical prediction techniques. Needless to say, such determinations must be nondiscriminatory and fair in sensitive features, such as race, gender, religion, and so on. Several researchers have recently begun to attempt the development of analysis techniques that are aware of social fairness or discrimination. They have shown that simply avoiding the use of sensitive features is insufficient for eliminating biases in determinations, due to the indirect influence of sensitive information. In this paper, we first discuss three causes of unfairness in machine learning. We then propose a regularization approach that is applicable to any prediction algorithm with probabilistic discriminative models. We further apply this approach to logistic regression and empirically show its effectiveness and efficiency.

在高赌注域中的机器学习工具的实际应用通常被调节为公平，因此预测目标应该满足相对于受保护属性的奇偶校验的一些定量概念。然而，公平性和准确性之间的确切权衡并不完全清楚，即使是对分类问题的基本范式也是如此。在本文中，我们通过在任何公平分类器的群体误差之和中提供较低的界限，在分类设置中表征统计奇偶校验和准确性之间的固有权衡。我们不可能的定理可以被解释为公平的某种不确定性原则：如果基本率不同，那么符合统计奇偶校验的任何公平分类器都必须在至少一个组中产生很大的错误。我们进一步扩展了这一结果，以便在学习公平陈述的角度下给出任何（大约）公平分类者的联合误差的下限。为了表明我们的下限是紧张的，假设Oracle访问贝叶斯（潜在不公平）分类器，我们还构造了一种返回一个随机分类器的算法，这是最佳和公平的。有趣的是，当受保护的属性可以采用超过两个值时，这个下限的扩展不承认分析解决方案。然而，在这种情况下，我们表明，通过解决线性程序，我们可以通过解决我们作为电视 - 重心问题的术语，电视距离的重心问题来有效地计算下限。在上面，我们证明，如果集团明智的贝叶斯最佳分类器是关闭的，那么学习公平的表示导致公平的替代概念，称为准确性奇偶校验，这使得错误率在组之间关闭。最后，我们还在现实世界数据集上进行实验，以确认我们的理论发现。