The long road to fairer algorithms

Kusner, Matt J.; Loftus, Joshua R.

doi:10.1038/d41586-020-00274-3

COMMENT
04 February 2020
Correction 11 February 2020
Correction 11 December 2020

The long road to fairer algorithms

Build models that identify and mitigate the causes of discrimination.

By

Matt J. Kusner⁰ &
Joshua R. Loftus¹

Matt J. Kusner
1. Matt J. Kusner is an associate professor in the Department of Computer Science at University College London, and a fellow at The Alan Turing Institute, London, UK.
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Joshua R. Loftus
1. Joshua R. Loftus is an assistant professor in the Department of Technology, Operations, and Statistics at New York University, New York, USA.
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A migrant farm worker, scans her fingerprints to register to receive a national identity card and number in New Delhi — A migrant farm worker has her fingerprints scanned so that she can register for a national identity card in India. Credit: Ruth Fremson/NYT/Redux/eyevine

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An algorithm deployed across the United States is now known to underestimate the health needs of black patients¹. The algorithm uses health-care costs as a proxy for health needs. But black patients’ health-care costs have historically been lower because systemic racism has impeded their access to treatment — not because they are healthier.

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Nature 578, 34-36 (2020)

doi: https://doi.org/10.1038/d41586-020-00274-3

Updates & Corrections

Correction 11 February 2020: An earlier version of this comment neglected to mention that Matt J. Kusner is also a fellow at the Alan Turing Institute in London.
Correction 11 December 2020: An earlier version of this Comment gave the wrong author name for reference 2.

References

Obermeyer, Z. et al. Science 366, 447–453 (2019).
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Pearl, J. Causality: Models, Reasoning, and Inference (Cambridge Univ. Press, 2000).
Google Scholar
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Kusner, M. J., Loftus, J., Russell, C. & Silva, R. In Advances in Neural Information Processing Systems 4066–4076 (MIT Press, 2017).
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Grgic-Hlaca, N. et al. ‘The case for process fairness in learning: Feature selection for fair decision making.’ NeurIPS Symposium on Machine Learning and the Law (2016).
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[1] Obermeyer, Z. et al. Science 366, 447–453 (2019).
Article PubMed Google Scholar

[2] Pearl, J. Causality: Models, Reasoning, and Inference (Cambridge Univ. Press, 2000).
Google Scholar

[3] Spirtes, P. et al. Causation, Prediction, and Search (MIT Press, 2000).
Google Scholar

[4] Kusner, M. J., Loftus, J., Russell, C. & Silva, R. In Advances in Neural Information Processing Systems 4066–4076 (MIT Press, 2017).
Google Scholar

[5] Liu, L. T. et al. In International Conference on Machine Learning 3150–3158 (ACM, 2018).
Google Scholar

[6] Kusner, M., Russell, C., Loftus, J. & Silva, R. Proc. Machine Learning Res. 97, 3591–3600 (2019).
Google Scholar

[7] Barocas, S. & Selbst, A. D. Calif. L. Rev. 104, 671 (2016).
Google Scholar

[8] Lum, K. Nature Hum. Behav. 1, 0141 (2017).
Article Google Scholar

[9] Simon, M. ‘HP looking into claim webcams can’t see black people.’ (CNN Tech, 23 December 2009).

[10] McManus, H. D. et al. Race Justice https://doi.org/10.1177/2153368719849486 (2019).
Article Google Scholar

[11] Kilbertus, N. et al. ‘The Sensitivity of Counterfactual Fairness to Unmeasured Confounding’. In Uncertainty in Artificial Intelligence (AUAI, 2019).
Google Scholar

[12] Grgic-Hlaca, N. et al. ‘The case for process fairness in learning: Feature selection for fair decision making.’ NeurIPS Symposium on Machine Learning and the Law (2016).

[13] Wilford, M. M. & Khairalla, A. in A System of Pleas: Social Sciences Contributions to the Real Legal System Ch. 7, 132 (Oxford Univ. Press, 2019).
Google Scholar

[14] Zafar, M. B., Valera, I., Rogriguez, M. G. & Gummadi, K. P. In Artificial Intelligence and Statistics 962–970 (2017).

[15] Dobash, R. E., Dobash, R. P., Cavanagh, K. & Lewis, R. Violence Against Women 10, 577–605 (2004).
Article Google Scholar

[16] Hardt, M., Price, E. & Srebro, N. ‘Equality of opportunity in supervised learning’. In Advances in Neural Information Processing Systems 16 3315–3323 (MIT Press, 2016).
Google Scholar

[17] Dwork, C. et al. ‘Fairness through awareness’. In Proc. 3rd Innov. Theoret. Comp. Sci. Conf. 214–226 (ITCS, 2012).
Google Scholar

[18] Pizer, J. C. et al. Loy. LAL Rev. 45, 715 (2011).
Google Scholar

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