Participatory Problem Formulation for Fairer Machine Learning Through Community Based System Dynamics
Abstract
Recent research on algorithmic fairness has highlighted that the problem formulation phase of ML system development can be a key source of bias that has significant downstream impacts on ML system fairness outcomes. However, very little attention has been paid to methods for improving the fairness efficacy of this critical phase of ML system development. Current practice neither accounts for the dynamic complexity of high-stakes domains nor incorporates the perspectives of vulnerable stakeholders. In this paper we introduce community based system dynamics (CBSD) as an approach to enable the participation of typically excluded stakeholders in the problem formulation phase of the ML system development process and facilitate the deep problem understanding required to mitigate bias during this crucial stage.
Cite
@article{arxiv.2005.07572,
title = {Participatory Problem Formulation for Fairer Machine Learning Through Community Based System Dynamics},
author = {Donald Martin and Vinodkumar Prabhakaran and Jill Kuhlberg and Andrew Smart and William S. Isaac},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2005.07572},
year = {2020}
}
Comments
Eighth Annual Conference on Learning Representations (ICLR 2020), Virtual Workshop: Machine Learning in Real Life, April 26, 2020, 6 pages, 1 figure, fix comment typo, fix author name