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200 papers

Machine learning software is being used in many applications (finance, hiring, admissions, criminal justice) having a huge social impact. But sometimes the behavior of this software is biased and it shows discrimination based on some…

Software Engineering · Computer Science 2020-08-31 Joymallya Chakraborty , Kewen Peng , Tim Menzies

Machine learning (ML) algorithms are increasingly deployed to make critical decisions in socioeconomic applications such as finance, criminal justice, and autonomous driving. However, due to their data-driven and pattern-seeking nature, ML…

Software Engineering · Computer Science 2026-01-08 Verya Monjezi , Ashish Kumar , Ashutosh Trivedi , Gang Tan , Saeid Tizpaz-Niari

In machine learning (ML) applications, unfairness is triggered due to bias in the data, the data curation process, erroneous assumptions, and implicit bias rendered during the development process. It is also well-accepted by researchers…

Human-Computer Interaction · Computer Science 2025-01-24 Anoop Mishra , Deepak Khazanchi

Machine learning models are widely adopted in scenarios that directly affect people. The development of software systems based on these models raises societal and legal concerns, as their decisions may lead to the unfair treatment of…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2019-10-08 Inês Valentim , Nuno Lourenço , Nuno Antunes

As society becomes increasingly reliant on artificial intelligence, the need to mitigate risk and harm is paramount. In response, researchers and practitioners have developed tools to detect and reduce undesired bias, commonly referred to…

Software Engineering · Computer Science 2025-05-16 Sadia Afrin Mim , Fatemeh Vares , Andrew Meenly , Brittany Johnson

Fairness is a critical requirement for Machine Learning (ML) software, driving the development of numerous bias mitigation methods. Previous research has identified a leveling-down effect in bias mitigation for computer vision and natural…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2025-08-06 Zhenpeng Chen , Xinyue Li , Jie M. Zhang , Weisong Sun , Ying Xiao , Tianlin Li , Yiling Lou , Yang Liu

As the adoption of machine learning (ML) systems continues to grow across industries, concerns about fairness and bias in these systems have taken center stage. Fairness toolkits, designed to mitigate bias in ML models, serve as critical…

Software Engineering · Computer Science 2024-12-20 Gianmario Voria , Stefano Lambiase , Maria Concetta Schiavone , Gemma Catolino , Fabio Palomba

At the intersection of the cutting-edge technologies and privacy concerns, Federated Learning (FL) with its distributed architecture, stands at the forefront in a bid to facilitate collaborative model training across multiple clients while…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2025-09-03 Noorain Mukhtiar , Adnan Mahmood , Quan Z. Sheng

The fairness of machine learning (ML) approaches is critical to the reliability of modern artificial intelligence systems. Despite extensive study on this topic, the fairness of ML models in the software engineering (SE) domain has not been…

Software Engineering · Computer Science 2023-07-24 Mohammad Mahdi Mohajer , Alvine Boaye Belle , Nima Shiri harzevili , Junjie Wang , Hadi Hemmati , Song Wang , Zhen Ming , Jiang

Context: This study explores how software professionals identify and address biases in AI systems within the software industry, focusing on practical knowledge and real-world applications. Goal: We aimed to understand the strategies…

Software Engineering · Computer Science 2024-09-05 Ronnie de Souza Santos , Luiz Fernando de Lima , Maria Teresa Baldassarre , Rodrigo Spinola

Machine Learning software systems are frequently used in our day-to-day lives. Some of these systems are used in various sensitive environments to make life-changing decisions. Therefore, it is crucial to ensure that these AI/ML systems do…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2025-08-25 Ajoy Das , Gias Uddin , Shaiful Chowdhury , Mostafijur Rahman Akhond , Hadi Hemmati

Computers are increasingly used to make decisions that have significant impact in people's lives. Often, these predictions can affect different population subgroups disproportionately. As a result, the issue of fairness has received much…

The rapid trend of deploying artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML) systems in socially consequential domains has raised growing concerns about their trustworthiness, including potential discriminatory behaviours. Research…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2025-09-22 Yijun Bian , Lei You , Yuya Sasaki , Haruka Maeda , Akira Igarashi

This paper investigates the parameter space of machine learning (ML) algorithms in aggravating or mitigating fairness bugs. Data-driven software is increasingly applied in social-critical applications where ensuring fairness is of paramount…

Software Engineering · Computer Science 2022-02-15 Saeid Tizpaz-Niari , Ashish Kumar , Gang Tan , Ashutosh Trivedi

Classification, a heavily-studied data-driven machine learning task, drives an increasing number of prediction systems involving critical human decisions such as loan approval and criminal risk assessment. However, classifiers often…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2022-04-12 Maliha Tashfia Islam , Anna Fariha , Alexandra Meliou , Babak Salimi

Machine learning based systems are reaching society at large and in many aspects of everyday life. This phenomenon has been accompanied by concerns about the ethical issues that may arise from the adoption of these technologies. ML fairness…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2021-01-01 Luca Oneto , Silvia Chiappa

Modern software relies heavily on data and machine learning, and affects decisions that shape our world. Unfortunately, recent studies have shown that because of biases in data, software systems frequently inject bias into their decisions,…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2020-12-21 Brittany Johnson , Jesse Bartola , Rico Angell , Katherine Keith , Sam Witty , Stephen J. Giguere , Yuriy Brun

Software bias is an increasingly important operational concern for software engineers. We present a large-scale, comprehensive empirical study of 17 representative bias mitigation methods for Machine Learning (ML) classifiers, evaluated…

Software Engineering · Computer Science 2023-02-13 Zhenpeng Chen , Jie M. Zhang , Federica Sarro , Mark Harman

Despite the rapid development and great success of machine learning models, extensive studies have exposed their disadvantage of inheriting latent discrimination and societal bias from the training data. This phenomenon hinders their…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2021-12-30 Tianxiang Zhao , Enyan Dai , Kai Shu , Suhang Wang

This research seeks to benefit the software engineering society by proposing comparative separation, a novel group fairness notion to evaluate the fairness of machine learning software on comparative judgment test data. Fairness issues have…

Software Engineering · Computer Science 2026-01-13 Xiaoyin Xi , Neeku Capak , Kate Stockwell , Zhe Yu