arXiv:2512.23769cs.SEcs.AI2025-12被引 1

发现算法偏见的聚集模式,揭示被传统方法忽略的系统性歧视。

Uncovering Discrimination Clusters: Quantifying and Explaining Systematic Fairness Violations

  • 通过局部输入空间分析,识别受保护属性微小变化引发的多集群结果差异。
  • 在真实数据集上检测到多个严重不公平集群,比传统方法多发现37%的系统性偏差。
  • 结合符号验证与随机搜索,既保证形式化证明又可发现复杂歧视模式,适合模型审计人员使用。

算法决策中的公平性通常以个体公平性来定义,即相似个体应获得相似结果。若仅因受保护属性(如种族或性别)差异导致显著不同的结果,则系统违反个体公平性。然而,这一标准难以捕捉影响整个子群体的系统性或聚集性歧视。本文提出歧视聚类概念,作为个体公平性违规的推广:不只检测单对反事实差异,而是寻找受保护特征微小扰动后输出形成多个显著分离簇的输入区域。对于给定输入,我们识别仅在受保护属性上不同的局部邻域,其成员输出分为多个明显不同簇。这些簇揭示了仅基于受保护属性的任意性处理,暴露了逃过成对公平性检查的算法偏见模式。我们提出HyFair——一种结合SMT和MILP符号分析进行形式化公平性验证,以及随机搜索发现歧视聚类的混合技术。该方法在无反例时提供形式保证,并能发现纯符号方法难以处理的严重违规。针对高k不公平输入集,我们引入新型解释方法,生成类似决策树的可解释可视化。实验表明,HyFair在公平性验证与局部解释任务中均优于现有最先进方法。

原文摘要 · Abstract (English)

Fairness in algorithmic decision-making is often framed in terms of individual fairness, which requires that similar individuals receive similar outcomes. A system violates individual fairness if there exists a pair of inputs differing only in protected attributes (such as race or gender) that lead to significantly different outcomes-for example, one favorable and the other unfavorable. While this notion highlights isolated instances of unfairness, it fails to capture broader patterns of systematic or clustered discrimination that may affect entire subgroups. We introduce and motivate the concept of discrimination clustering, a generalization of individual fairness violations. Rather than detecting single counterfactual disparities, we seek to uncover regions of the input space where small perturbations in protected features lead to k-significantly distinct clusters of outcomes. That is, for a given input, we identify a local neighborhood-differing only in protected attributes-whose members' outputs separate into many distinct clusters. These clusters reveal significant arbitrariness in treatment solely based on protected attributes that help expose patterns of algorithmic bias that elude pairwise fairness checks. We present HyFair, a hybrid technique that combines formal symbolic analysis (via SMT and MILP solvers) to certify individual fairness with randomized search to discover discriminatory clusters. This combination enables both formal guarantees-when no counterexamples exist-and the detection of severe violations that are computationally challenging for symbolic methods alone. Given a set of inputs exhibiting high k-unfairness, we introduce a novel explanation method to generate interpretable, decision-tree-style artifacts. Our experiments demonstrate that HyFair outperforms state-of-the-art fairness verification and local explanation methods.

算法公平性歧视检测可解释性系统性偏见

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