arXiv:2501.13223cs.LG2025-01被引 1

数据源比模型大小更关键,决定视觉语言模型的性别与种族偏见程度。

Data Matters Most: Auditing Social Bias in Contrastive Vision Language Models

  • 对比CLIP与OpenCLIP,分离模型规模、数据量与数据来源影响
  • 使用LAION数据集使种族偏见上升,替换私有数据可提升性别公平性
  • 后处理去偏策略效果依赖数据源与模型规模,无普适解

视觉语言模型(VLMs)虽具备强大零样本识别能力,但常继承训练数据中的社会偏见。本文通过比较共享相同对比目标但编码器宽度和图像-文本语料不同的CLIP与OpenCLIP,系统拆解模型规模、数据量与数据来源三个设计因素的影响。在平衡的人脸分析基准测试中,扩大编码器可降低CLIP的性别偏差,却加剧OpenCLIP的性别与种族偏差;将LAION数据集从400M扩展至2B进一步增加其偏见。在匹配模型与数据预算下,用LAION替代私有数据能改善性别公平性,但加重种族偏见,凸显数据源是偏见模式的主要驱动因素。评估三种测试时后处理去偏方法——Bias Prompts、Prompt Array与SANER:去偏可减少但无法消除危害,且效果取决于数据源与模型规模——Bias Prompts在小模型的CLIP中更有效降低性别偏见,而Prompt Array与SANER在OpenCLIP中更可靠缓解种族偏见;扩大LAION会改变最优去偏方法。整体表明,更大模型或数据集并不自动更公平,训练数据源是偏见及缓解有效性关键决定因素。代码与评估脚本已开源,支持未来VLM的透明可复现审计。

原文摘要 · Abstract (English)

Vision-language models (VLMs) deliver strong zero-shot recognition but frequently inherit social biases from their training data. We systematically disentangle three design factors -- model size, training-data scale, and training-data source -- by comparing CLIP and OpenCLIP, two models that share an identical contrastive objective yet differ in encoder width and in the image-text corpora on which they are pre-trained (400M proprietary pairs vs. 400M/2B LAION). Across balanced face-analysis benchmarks, enlarging the encoder reduces gender skew in CLIP but amplifies both gender and racial skew in OpenCLIP; increasing the LAION corpus from 400M to 2B further increases OpenCLIP bias. At matched model and data budgets, substituting proprietary data with LAION improves gender fairness while increasing racial skew, underscoring data source as the primary driver of bias patterns. We also evaluate three post-hoc, test-time debiasing strategies -- Bias Prompts, Prompt Array, and SANER. Debiasing reduces but does not eliminate harm, and its effectiveness is source- and size-dependent: Bias Prompts most effectively reduce gender skew in CLIP at smaller model sizes, whereas Prompt Array and SANER more reliably reduce racial skew in OpenCLIP; scaling LAION reconfigures which method is most fair. Taken together, these findings challenge the assumption that bigger models or datasets are automatically fairer and foreground training data source as the key determinant of both bias and mitigation efficacy. We release code and evaluation scripts to enable transparent, reproducible auditing of future VLMs.

视觉语言模型偏见审计数据源去偏

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