Related papers: Algorithms for Fairness in Sequential Decision Mak…
General purpose intelligent learning agents cycle through (complex,non-MDP) sequences of observations, actions, and rewards. On the other hand, reinforcement learning is well-developed for small finite state Markov Decision Processes…
This paper investigates the optimization problem of an infinite stage discrete time Markov decision process (MDP) with a long-run average metric considering both mean and variance of rewards together. Such performance metric is important…
Algorithmic decision-making (ADM) increasingly shapes people's daily lives. Given that such autonomous systems can cause severe harm to individuals and social groups, fairness concerns have arisen. A human-centric approach demanded by…
As financial institutions increasingly rely on machine learning models to automate lending decisions, concerns about algorithmic fairness have risen. This paper explores the tradeoff between enforcing fairness constraints (such as…
Neglecting the effect that decisions have on individuals (and thus, on the underlying data distribution) when designing algorithmic decision-making policies may increase inequalities and unfairness in the long term - even if fairness…
Ensuring long-term fairness is crucial when developing automated decision making systems, specifically in dynamic and sequential environments. By maximizing their reward without consideration of fairness, AI agents can introduce disparities…
We consider Incentive Decision Processes, where a principal seeks to reduce its costs due to another agent's behavior, by offering incentives to the agent for alternate behavior. We focus on the case where a principal interacts with a…
This paper proposes SCALES, a general framework that translates well-established fairness principles into a common representation based on the Constraint Markov Decision Process (CMDP). With the help of causal language, our framework can…
We present a new geometric interpretation of Markov Decision Processes (MDPs) with a natural normalization procedure that allows us to adjust the value function at each state without altering the advantage of any action with respect to any…
An algorithmic decision-maker incentivizes people to act in certain ways to receive better decisions. These incentives can dramatically influence subjects' behaviors and lives, and it is important that both decision-makers and…
Markov decision processes (MDPs) are a popular model for performance analysis and optimization of stochastic systems. The parameters of stochastic behavior of MDPs are estimates from empirical observations of a system; their values are not…
This paper considers an infinite-horizon Markov decision process (MDP) that allows for general non-exponential discount functions, in both discrete and continuous time. Due to the inherent time inconsistency, we look for a randomized…
Markov decision processes (MDPs) are a standard model for sequential decision-making problems and are widely used across many scientific areas, including formal methods and artificial intelligence (AI). MDPs do, however, come with the…
Machine Learning (ML) decision-making algorithms are now widely used in predictive decision-making, for example, to determine who to admit and give a loan. Their wide usage and consequential effects on individuals led the ML community to…
In recent years, machine learning techniques have been increasingly applied in sensitive decision making processes, raising fairness concerns. Past research has shown that machine learning may reproduce and even exacerbate human bias due to…
As Recommender Systems (RS) influence more and more people in their daily life, the issue of fairness in recommendation is becoming more and more important. Most of the prior approaches to fairness-aware recommendation have been situated in…
Algorithmic fairness in decision-making has been studied extensively in static settings where one-shot decisions are made on tasks such as classification. However, in practice most decision-making processes are of a sequential nature, where…
Markov decision processes (MDPs) are widely used in modeling decision making problems in stochastic environments. However, precise specification of the reward functions in MDPs is often very difficult. Recent approaches have focused on…
Markov decision processes (MDPs) are the defacto frame-work for sequential decision making in the presence ofstochastic uncertainty. A classical optimization criterion forMDPs is to maximize the expected discounted-sum pay-off, which…
The distributionally robust Markov Decision Process (MDP) approach asks for a distributionally robust policy that achieves the maximal expected total reward under the most adversarial distribution of uncertain parameters. In this paper, we…