提出FVNN模型,用图卷积稳定处理带偏见的协方差数据,提升公平性与准确性。
Fair CoVariance Neural Networks
- 在协方差矩阵上做图卷积,结合公平估计与端到端正则化。
- 在小样本场景下比传统PCA更稳定,公平性显著提升。
- 适用于需要兼顾公平与性能的机器学习任务,如医疗、金融建模。
基于协方差的数据处理广泛应用于信号处理与机器学习,因其能建模数据间的关联性。然而,数据中的有害偏差可能被编码进样本协方差矩阵,导致数据驱动方法对不同子群体不公平。现有方法如公平主成分分析(Fair PCA)虽可缓解此问题,但在小样本情况下仍不稳定,可能危及公平目标。为此,本文提出公平协方差神经网络(FVNN),通过在协方差矩阵上进行图卷积,实现公平且准确的预测。FVNN兼容多种已有偏差缓解技术:一方面在公平协方差估计基础上操作,消除主成分中的偏差;另一方面通过损失函数中的公平性正则项端到端训练,使模型参数直接服务于公平任务。理论证明,由于在小样本下更稳定,FVNN天然比类似PCA方法更具公平性。我们在合成与真实数据上验证了模型的鲁棒性与公平性,展示了FVNN的灵活性及其在公平与准确之间的权衡特性。
原文摘要 · Abstract (English)
Covariance-based data processing is widespread across signal processing and machine learning applications due to its ability to model data interconnectivities and dependencies. However, harmful biases in the data may become encoded in the sample covariance matrix and cause data-driven methods to treat different subpopulations unfairly. Existing works such as fair principal component analysis (PCA) mitigate these effects, but remain unstable in low sample regimes, which in turn may jeopardize the fairness goal. To address both biases and instability, we propose Fair coVariance Neural Networks (FVNNs), which perform graph convolutions on the covariance matrix for both fair and accurate predictions. Our FVNNs provide a flexible model compatible with several existing bias mitigation techniques. In particular, FVNNs allow for mitigating the bias in two ways: first, they operate on fair covariance estimates that remove biases from their principal components; second, they are trained in an end-to-end fashion via a fairness regularizer in the loss function so that the model parameters are tailored to solve the task directly in a fair manner. We prove that FVNNs are intrinsically fairer than analogous PCA approaches thanks to their stability in low sample regimes. We validate the robustness and fairness of our model on synthetic and real-world data, showcasing the flexibility of FVNNs along with the tradeoff between fair and accurate performance.
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