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In high-stake domains such as healthcare and hiring, the role of machine learning (ML) in decision-making raises significant fairness concerns. This work focuses on Counterfactual Fairness (CF), which posits that an ML model's outcome on…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2025-01-23 Zeyu Zhou , Tianci Liu , Ruqi Bai , Jing Gao , Murat Kocaoglu , David I. Inouye

Counterfactual explanations can be obtained by identifying the smallest change made to a feature vector to qualitatively influence a prediction; for example, from 'loan rejected' to 'awarded' or from 'high risk of cardiovascular disease' to…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2020-05-05 Martin Pawelczyk , Johannes Haug , Klaus Broelemann , Gjergji Kasneci

Policies trained via reinforcement learning (RL) are often very complex even for simple tasks. In an episode with $n$ time steps, a policy will make $n$ decisions on actions to take, many of which may appear non-intuitive to the observer.…

Artificial Intelligence · Computer Science 2021-11-17 Daniel McNamee , Hana Chockler

Counterfactuals, or modified inputs that lead to a different outcome, are an important tool for understanding the logic used by machine learning classifiers and how to change an undesirable classification. Even if a counterfactual changes a…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2024-05-21 Jesse Friedbaum , Sudarshan Adiga , Ravi Tandon

We study sequential social learning with endogenous information acquisition when agents have a taste for nonconformity. Each agent observes predecessors' actions, chooses whether to acquire a private signal (and its precision), and then…

Theoretical Economics · Economics 2026-01-05 Georgy Lukyanov , Vasilii Ivanik

Fair decisions require ignoring irrelevant, potentially biasing, information. To achieve this, decision-makers need to approximate what decision they would have made had they not known certain facts, such as the gender or race of a job…

Computation and Language · Computer Science 2026-01-22 Brian Christian , Matan Mazor

In quantum physics there are well-known situations when measurements of the same property in different contexts (under different conditions) have the same probability distribution, but cannot be represented by one and the same random…

Neurons and Cognition · Quantitative Biology 2020-06-02 Irina Basieva , Víctor H. Cervantes , Ehtibar N. Dzhafarov , Andrei Khrennikov

In our original article (Sarvet & Stensrud, 2024), we examine twin definitions of "harm" in personalized medicine: one based on predictions of individuals' unmeasurable response types (counterfactual harm), and another based solely on the…

Applications · Statistics 2024-03-25 Aaron L. Sarvet , Mats J. Stensrud

Credit assignment in reinforcement learning is the problem of measuring an action's influence on future rewards. In particular, this requires separating skill from luck, i.e. disentangling the effect of an action on rewards from that of…

Resource allocation is fundamental to a variety of societal decision-making settings, ranging from the distribution of charitable donations to assigning limited public housing among interested families. A central challenge in this context…

Computer Science and Game Theory · Computer Science 2025-06-11 Hadi Hosseini , Joshua Kavner , Sujoy Sikdar , Rohit Vaish , Lirong Xia

We revisit empirical Bayes discrimination detection, focusing on uncertainty arising from both partial identification and sampling variability. While prior work has mostly focused on partial identification, we find that some empirical…

Econometrics · Economics 2025-08-19 Jiaying Gu , Nikolaos Ignatiadis , Azeem M. Shaikh

Automated decision support systems that are able to infer second opinions from experts can potentially facilitate a more efficient allocation of resources; they can help decide when and from whom to seek a second opinion. In this paper, we…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2022-07-01 Nina L. Corvelo Benz , Manuel Gomez Rodriguez

Interpretability research takes counterfactual theories of causality for granted. Most causal methods rely on counterfactual interventions to inputs or the activations of particular model components, followed by observations of the change…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2024-07-08 Aaron Mueller

This work showcases a new approach for causal discovery by leveraging user experiments and recent advances in photo-realistic image editing, demonstrating a potential of identifying causal factors and understanding complex systems…

Computer Vision and Pattern Recognition · Computer Science 2021-08-23 Tao Li

The fundamental problem of causal inference -- that we never observe counterfactuals -- prevents us from identifying how many might be negatively affected by a proposed intervention. If, in an A/B test, half of users click (or buy, or…

Methodology · Statistics 2022-11-22 Nathan Kallus

It is often argued that bottom-up causation under a physicalist, reductionist worldview precludes free will in the libertarian sense. On the one hand, the paradigm of classical mechanics makes determinism inescapable, while on the other,…

Neurons and Cognition · Quantitative Biology 2016-10-11 Salvador Malo

Conflicts of interest often arise between data sources and their users regarding how the users' information needs should be interpreted by the data source. For example, an online product search might be biased towards presenting certain…

Databases · Computer Science 2026-03-09 Nischal Aryal , Arash Termehchy , Marianne Winslett

Counterfactuals operationalised through algorithmic recourse have become a powerful tool to make artificial intelligence systems explainable. Conceptually, given an individual classified as y -- the factual -- we seek actions such that…

Counterfactual explanations (CEs) are a powerful means for understanding how decisions made by algorithms can be changed. Researchers have proposed a number of desiderata that CEs should meet to be practically useful, such as requiring…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2022-09-26 Marco Virgolin , Saverio Fracaros

Causality is vital for understanding true cause-and-effect relationships between variables within predictive models, rather than relying on mere correlations, making it highly relevant in the field of Explainable AI. In an automated…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2024-08-28 Arturo Fredes , Jordi Vitria