Strategic Best-Response Fairness Framework for Fair Machine Learning

• 成果类型: Article
• 署名作者: Shimao, Hajime; Khern-Am-Nuai, Warut; Kannan, Karthik; Cohen, Maxime C.
• 署名单位: Pennsylvania Commonwealth System of Higher Education (PCSHE); Pennsylvania State University; McGill University; University of Arizona
• 刊物名称: INFORMATION SYSTEMS RESEARCH
• ISSN/ISSBN: 1047-7047; 1526-5536
• DOI: 10.1287/isre.2022.0055
• 发表日期: 2025-12
• 关键词: algorithmic fairness; analytical modeling; economics of IS; performance

摘要

Discrimination in machine learning (ML) has become prominent as ML is increasingly used for decision-making. Although many fair-ML algorithms have been designed to address such discrimination issues, virtually all of them focus on alleviating disparity in the prediction results by imposing additional constraints. Naturally, in response, prediction subjects alter their behaviors. However, the algorithms never consider those behavioral responses. So, even if the disparity in prediction results may be removed, the disparity in behaviors may persist across different subpopulations of prediction subjects. When these biased behavioral outcomes are used for training ML algorithms, they can perpetuate discrimination in the long run. To study this issue, we define a new notion called strategic best-response fairness (SBR-fairness). It is defined in a context involving subpopulations that are ex ante identical and also have identical conditional payoffs. Even if an algorithm is trained on biased data, will it lead to identical equilibrium behaviors of subpopulations? If yes, we define the ML as SBR-fair. We then use this SBR-fairness framework to analyze the property of existing fair ML algorithms. We also discuss how the SBR-fairness framework can inform the design of fair ML algorithms and the practical and policy implications of SBR-fairness.