提出两种新方法,量化特征对模型公平性的影响。
Fair Feature Importance Scores via Feature Occlusion and Permutation
- 通过打乱特征值或移除特征,对比公平性变化
- 两种方法均简单高效,可扩展至多种任务
- 适合关注模型公平性的研究人员和工程师
随着机器学习模型日益影响社会,其不透明性给信任与问责带来挑战,尤其是在公平性场景中。理解单个特征如何影响模型结果,对于构建可解释且公平的模型至关重要。尽管用于准确性的特征重要性度量已较成熟,但评估特征对公平性贡献的方法仍不充分。本文提出两种模型无关的方法来衡量公平性特征重要性:一是通过打乱特征值前后模型公平性的变化,直接评估该特征对训练过程的贡献;二是比较有无某特征时模型的公平性表现,采用小批次学习实现显著的计算简化。实验结果表明,这两种方法在多个预测任务中均表现出简洁性和有效性。二者均提供简单、可扩展且可解释的工具,用于量化特征对公平性的影响,为负责任的机器学习开发提供新手段。
原文摘要 · Abstract (English)
As machine learning models increasingly impact society, their opaque nature poses challenges to trust and accountability, particularly in fairness contexts. Understanding how individual features influence model outcomes is crucial for building interpretable and equitable models. While feature importance metrics for accuracy are well-established, methods for assessing feature contributions to fairness remain underexplored. We propose two model-agnostic approaches to measure fair feature importance. First, we propose to compare model fairness before and after permuting feature values. This simple intervention-based approach decouples a feature and model predictions to measure its contribution to training. Second, we evaluate the fairness of models trained with and without a given feature. This occlusion-based score enjoys dramatic computational simplification via minipatch learning. Our empirical results reflect the simplicity and effectiveness of our proposed metrics for multiple predictive tasks. Both methods offer simple, scalable, and interpretable solutions to quantify the influence of features on fairness, providing new tools for responsible machine learning development.
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