Predicting Fairness of ML Software Configurations
This paper investigates the relationships between hyperparameters of machine learning and fairness. Data-driven solutions are increasingly used in critical socio-technical applications where ensuring fairness is important. Rather than explicitly encoding decision logic via control and data structures, the ML developers provide input data, perform some pre-processing, choose ML algorithms, and tune hyperparameters (HPs) to infer a program that encodes the decision logic. Prior works report that the selection of HPs can significantly influence fairness. However, tuning HPs to find an ideal trade-off between accuracy, precision, and fairness has remained an expensive and tedious task. Can we predict fairness of HP configuration for a given dataset? Are the predictions robust to distribution shifts? We focus on group fairness notions and investigate the HP space of 5 training algorithms. We first find that tree regressors and XGBoots significantly outperformed deep neural networks and support vector machines in accurately predicting the fairness of HPs. When predicting the fairness of ML hyperparameters under temporal distribution shift, the tree regressors outperforms the other algorithms with reasonable accuracy. However, the precision depends on the ML training algorithm, dataset, and protected attributes. For example, the tree regressor model was robust for training data shift from 2014 to 2018 on logistic regression and discriminant analysis HPs with sex as the protected attribute; but not for race and other training algorithms. Our method provides a sound framework to efficiently perform fine-tuning of ML training algorithms and understand the relationships between HPs and fairness.
Code (0)
등록된 구현이 없습니다.
Tasks
AttributeFairnessMethods 이 논문이 사용한 방법론
Similar Papers 제목 키워드 기반
Faster Discovery of Faster System Configurations with Spectral Learning
Despite the huge spread and economical importance of configurable software systems, there is unsatisfactory support in utilizing the full potential of these systems with respect to finding performance-optimal configurati…
Dimensionality ReductionPredicting Performance of Software Configurations: There is no Silver Bullet
Many software systems offer configuration options to tailor their functionality and non-functional properties (e.g., performance). Often, users are interested in the (performance-)optimal configuration, but struggle to f…
BIG-bench Machine LearningPredictionHeteroSwitch: Characterizing and Taming System-Induced Data Heterogeneity in Federated Learning
Federated Learning (FL) is a practical approach to train deep learning models collaboratively across user-end devices, protecting user privacy by retaining raw data on-device. In FL, participating user-end devices are hi…
Domain GeneralizationFairnessFederated LearningAstraea: Grammar-based Fairness Testing
Software often produces biased outputs. In particular, machine learning (ML) based software are known to produce erroneous predictions when processing discriminatory inputs. Such unfair program behavior can be caused by …
FairnessFault DiagnosisPredicting Configuration Performance in Multiple Environments with Sequential Meta-learning
Learning and predicting the performance of given software configurations are of high importance to many software engineering activities. While configurable software systems will almost certainly face diverse running envi…
Meta-Learning