From Fair Decision Making To Social Equality
From Fair Decision Making To Social Equality
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从公平决策到社会平等
DOI：
10.1145/3287560.3287599
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发表时间：
2018
期刊：
影响因子：
--
通讯作者：
N. Srebro
中科院分区：
文献类型：
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作者：
Hussein Mozannar;Mesrob I. Ohannessian;N. Srebro
智能决策系统中的公平性研究大多忽略了对潜在人群的长期影响。然而，公平考虑(例如平权行动)的隐含目标往往是实现人口内各群体之间的平衡。平衡的最基本概念是群体资格之间的最终平等。我们如何才能在决策中融入影响力动态？忽略动态的公平政策在实现平等方面做得如何？在本文中，我们提出了一个简单但具有启发性的模型，该模型包括(1)一个选择过程，其中一个机构根据他们的资格从多个群体中进行选择，以最大化制度效用；(2)根据强加的政策，管理这些群体资格演变的动态。我们把人口平等作为平权行动的形式主义。我们首先给出了不受约束的政策本身达到平等的条件。在这种情况下，令人惊讶的是，强制实施人口平等可能会破坏平等。如果没有，人们会认为额外的约束会降低效用，然而，我们证明了效用实际上可能会增加。在现实世界的情景中，不受约束的政策不会导致平等。在这种情况下，我们发现，尽管强制实施人口结构平等可能会补救这一问题，但存在这样一种危险，即群体满足于一套更糟糕的资格证书。作为一线希望，我们还确定了何时约束不仅导致平等，而且还改善了所有群体。这些案例和权衡有助于确定何时以及如何在遴选过程中强制实施人口平等，从长远来看，这对机构和社会都是有益的。
The study of fairness in intelligent decision systems has mostly ignored long-term influence on the underlying population. Yet fairness considerations (e.g. affirmative action) have often the implicit goal of achieving balance among groups within the population. The most basic notion of balance is eventual equality between the qualifications of the groups. How can we incorporate influence dynamics in decision making? How well do dynamics-oblivious fairness policies fare in terms of reaching equality? In this paper, we propose a simple yet revealing model that encompasses (1) a selection process where an institution chooses from multiple groups according to their qualifications so as to maximize an institutional utility and (2) dynamics that govern the evolution of the groups' qualifications according to the imposed policies. We focus on demographic parity as the formalism of affirmative action. We first give conditions under which an unconstrained policy reaches equality on its own. In this case, surprisingly, imposing demographic parity may break equality. When it doesn't, one would expect the additional constraint to reduce utility, however, we show that utility may in fact increase. In real world scenarios, unconstrained policies do not lead to equality. In such cases, we show that although imposing demographic parity may remedy it, there is a danger that groups settle at a worse set of qualifications. As a silver lining, we also identify when the constraint not only leads to equality, but also improves all groups. These cases and trade-offs are instrumental in determining when and how imposing demographic parity can be beneficial in selection processes, both for the institution and for society on the long run.