Neural Information Processing Systems http://nips.cc/

Entity matching is one the earliest tasks that occur in the big data pipeline and is alarmingly exposed to unintentional biases that affect the quality of data. Identifying and mitigating the biases that exist in the data or are introduced by the matcher at this stage can contribute to promoting fairness in downstream tasks. This demonstration showcases FairEM360, a framework for 1) auditing the output of entity matchers across a wide range of fairness measures and paradigms, 2) providing potential explanations for the underlying reasons for unfairness, and 3) providing resolutions for the unfairness issues through an exploratory process with human-in-the-loop feedback, utilizing an ensemble of matchers. We aspire for FairEM360 to contribute to the prioritization of fairness as a key consideration in the evaluation of EM pipelines.

Allocation games are zero-sum games that model the distribution of resources among multiple agents. In this paper, we explore the interplay between an elastic sense of subjective identity and its impact on notions of fairness in allocation. An elastic sense of identity in agents is known to lead to responsible decision-making in non-cooperative, non-zero-sum games like Prisoners' Dilemma, and is a desirable feature to add into agent models. However, when it comes to allocation, an elastic sense of identity can be shown to exacerbate inequities in allocation, giving no rational incentive for agents to act fairly towards one another. This lead us to introduce a sense of fairness as an innate characteristic of autonomous agency. For this, we implement the well-known Ultimatum Game between two agents, where their elastic sense of self (controlled by a parameter called $\gamma$) and a sense of fairness (controlled by a parameter called $\tau$) are both varied. We study the points at which agents find it no longer rational to identify with the other agent, and uphold their sense of fairness, and vice versa. Such a study also helps us discern the subtle difference between responsibility and fairness when it comes to autonomous agency.

In this work, we propose an Automated Machine Learning (AutoML) system to search for models not only with good prediction accuracy but also fair. We first investigate the necessity and impact of unfairness mitigation in the AutoML context. We establish the FairAutoML framework. The framework provides a novel design based on pragmatic abstractions, which makes it convenient to incorporate existing fairness definitions, unfairness mitigation techniques, and hyperparameter search methods into the model search and evaluation process. Following this framework, we develop a fair AutoML system based on an existing AutoML system. The augmented system includes a resource allocation strategy to dynamically decide when and on which models to conduct unfairness mitigation according to the prediction accuracy, fairness, and resource consumption on the fly. Extensive empirical evaluation shows that our system can achieve a good `fair accuracy' and high resource efficiency.

Explains Nikola Konstantinov of Switzerland's ETH Zürich, "Fairness in AI is about ensuring that AI models don't discriminate when they're making decisions, particularly with respect to protected attributes like race, gender, or country of origin." As artificial intelligence (AI) becomes more widely used to make decisions that affect our lives, making certain it is fair is a growing concern. Algorithms can incorporate bias from several sources, from the people involved in different stages of their development to modelling choices that introduce or amplify unfairness. A machine learning system used by Amazon to pre-screen job applicants was found to display bias against women, for example, while an AI system used to analyze brain scans failed to perform equally well across people of different races. "Fairness in AI is about ensuring that AI models don't discriminate when they're making decisions, particularly with respect to protected attributes like race, gender, or country of origin," says Nikola Konstantinov, a post-doctoral fellow at the ETH AI Center of ETH Zürich, in Switzerland. Researchers typically use mathematical tools to measure the fairness of machine learning systems based on a specific definition of fairness.