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Related papers: Impossibility results for fair representations

200 papers

The causes underlying unfair decision making are complex, being internalised in different ways by decision makers, other actors dealing with data and models, and ultimately by the individuals being affected by these decisions. One frequent…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2019-05-31 Fernando Martínez-Plumed , Cèsar Ferri , David Nieves , José Hernández-Orallo

A key value proposition of machine learning is generalizability: the same methods and model architecture should be able to work across different domains and different contexts. While powerful, this generalization can sometimes go too far,…

Computers and Society · Computer Science 2025-09-25 Angelina Wang

Fair classification is a critical challenge that has gained increasing importance due to international regulations and its growing use in high-stakes decision-making settings. Existing methods often rely on adversarial learning or…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2025-10-14 Alberto Sinigaglia , Davide Sartor , Marina Ceccon , Gian Antonio Susto

The adoption of automated, data-driven decision making in an ever expanding range of applications has raised concerns about its potential unfairness towards certain social groups. In this context, a number of recent studies have focused on…

We consider the problem of whether a given decision model, working with structured data, has individual fairness. Following the work of Dwork, a model is individually biased (or unfair) if there is a pair of valid inputs which are close to…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2020-06-23 Philips George John , Deepak Vijaykeerthy , Diptikalyan Saha

Fairness emerged as an important requirement to guarantee that Machine Learning (ML) predictive systems do not discriminate against specific individuals or entire sub-populations, in particular, minorities. Given the inherent subjectivity…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2022-06-08 Karima Makhlouf , Sami Zhioua , Catuscia Palamidessi

In Machine Learning, an accepted definition of fairness of a decision taken by a classifier is that it should not depend on protected features, such as gender. Unfortunately, when constraints exist between features, such dependencies can be…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2026-05-04 Martin C. Cooper , Imane Bousdira

This paper presents a philosophical and experimental study of fairness interventions in AI classification, centered on the explainability of corrective methods. We argue that ensuring fairness requires not only satisfying a target…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2025-12-04 Thomas Souverain , Johnathan Nguyen , Nicolas Meric , Paul Égré

Various measures can be used to estimate bias or unfairness in a predictor. Previous work has already established that some of these measures are incompatible with each other. Here we show that, when groups differ in prevalence of the…

Applications · Statistics 2017-09-13 Thomas Miconi

One of the many fairness definitions pursued in recent recommender system research targets mitigating demographic information encoded in model representations. Models optimized for this definition are typically evaluated on how well…

Information Retrieval · Computer Science 2026-03-26 Bjørnar Vassøy , Benjamin Kille , Helge Langseth

Training machine learning models with the only accuracy as a final goal may promote prejudices and discriminatory behaviors embedded in the data. One solution is to learn latent representations that fulfill specific fairness metrics.…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2021-07-28 Patrik Joslin Kenfack , Adil Mehmood Khan , Rasheed Hussain , S. M. Ahsan Kazmi

The field of fair machine learning aims to ensure that decisions guided by algorithms are equitable. Over the last decade, several formal, mathematical definitions of fairness have gained prominence. Here we first assemble and categorize…

Computers and Society · Computer Science 2023-08-31 Sam Corbett-Davies , Johann D. Gaebler , Hamed Nilforoshan , Ravi Shroff , Sharad Goel

Training datasets for machine learning often have some form of missingness. For example, to learn a model for deciding whom to give a loan, the available training data includes individuals who were given a loan in the past, but not those…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2020-12-22 Naman Goel , Alfonso Amayuelas , Amit Deshpande , Amit Sharma

The impossibility theorem of fairness is a foundational result in the algorithmic fairness literature. It states that outside of special cases, one cannot exactly and simultaneously satisfy all three common and intuitive definitions of…

Computers and Society · Computer Science 2022-08-29 Brian Hsu , Rahul Mazumder , Preetam Nandy , Kinjal Basu

When machine-learning algorithms are used in high-stakes decisions, we want to ensure that their deployment leads to fair and equitable outcomes. This concern has motivated a fast-growing literature that focuses on diagnosing and addressing…

Computers and Society · Computer Science 2023-09-26 Talia Gillis , Bryce McLaughlin , Jann Spiess

Machine learning systems are increasingly being used to make impactful decisions such as loan applications and criminal justice risk assessments, and as such, ensuring fairness of these systems is critical. This is often challenging as the…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2020-12-18 YooJung Choi , Meihua Dang , Guy Van den Broeck

Organizations that own data face increasing legal liability for its discriminatory use against protected demographic groups, extending to contractual transactions involving third parties access and use of the data. This is problematic,…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2020-06-17 Xavier Gitiaux , Huzefa Rangwala

Algorithmic fairness involves expressing notions such as equity, or reasonable treatment, as quantifiable measures that a machine learning algorithm can optimise. Most work in the literature to date has focused on classification problems…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2020-03-06 Daniel Steinberg , Alistair Reid , Simon O'Callaghan

Machine learning algorithms can produce biased outcome/prediction, typically, against minorities and under-represented sub-populations. Therefore, fairness is emerging as an important requirement for the large scale application of machine…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2022-06-08 Karima Makhlouf , Sami Zhioua , Catuscia Palamidessi

Data-driven algorithms are only as good as the data they work with, while data sets, especially social data, often fail to represent minorities adequately. Representation Bias in data can happen due to various reasons ranging from…

Databases · Computer Science 2023-03-21 Nima Shahbazi , Yin Lin , Abolfazl Asudeh , H. V. Jagadish