论文标题
通过不受约束的优化进行公平分类
Fair Classification via Unconstrained Optimization
论文作者
论文摘要
在某些情况下,以群体的公平约束来实现贝叶斯最佳二进制分类规则可降低,以便在贝叶斯回归器上学习群体阈值规则。在本文中,我们通过证明,在更广泛的环境中,贝叶斯的最佳公平学习规则仍然是贝叶斯回归器的群体阈值规则,但在阈值处有(可能的)随机化。这为公平分类的后处理方法提供了更强的理由,在该方法中,(1)首先学习了预测因子,之后(2)调整其输出以消除偏见。我们展示了如何通过解决不受约束的优化问题来有效地学习这种两阶段方法中的后处理规则。所提出的算法可以应用于任何黑盒机器学习模型,例如深神经网络,随机森林和支持向量机。此外,它可以适应以前在文献中提出的许多公平标准,例如均衡的赔率和统计平等。我们证明该算法是贝叶斯一致的,并且通过不可能的结果来激励它,从而量化了多个人群群体的准确性和公平性之间的权衡。最后,我们通过验证成人基准数据集上的算法来得出结论。
Achieving the Bayes optimal binary classification rule subject to group fairness constraints is known to be reducible, in some cases, to learning a group-wise thresholding rule over the Bayes regressor. In this paper, we extend this result by proving that, in a broader setting, the Bayes optimal fair learning rule remains a group-wise thresholding rule over the Bayes regressor but with a (possible) randomization at the thresholds. This provides a stronger justification to the post-processing approach in fair classification, in which (1) a predictor is learned first, after which (2) its output is adjusted to remove bias. We show how the post-processing rule in this two-stage approach can be learned quite efficiently by solving an unconstrained optimization problem. The proposed algorithm can be applied to any black-box machine learning model, such as deep neural networks, random forests and support vector machines. In addition, it can accommodate many fairness criteria that have been previously proposed in the literature, such as equalized odds and statistical parity. We prove that the algorithm is Bayes consistent and motivate it, furthermore, via an impossibility result that quantifies the tradeoff between accuracy and fairness across multiple demographic groups. Finally, we conclude by validating the algorithm on the Adult benchmark dataset.