Blind Pareto Fairness and Subgroup Robustness
Authors: Natalia Martinez, Martin Bertran, Afroditi Papadaki, Miguel R. D. Rodrigues, Guillermo Sapiro
Keywords: fairness, fairness in machine learning, fairness without demographics, robustness, subgroup robustness, blind fairness, pareto fairness
Abstract: With the wide adoption of machine learning algorithms across various application domains, there is a growing interest in the fairness properties of such algorithms. The vast majority of the activity in the field of group fairness addresses disparities between predeﬁned groups based on protected features such as gender, age, and race, which need to be available at train, and often also at test, time. These approaches are static and retrospective, since algorithms designed to protect groups identified  a priori cannot anticipate and protect the needs of different at-risk groups in the future. In this work we analyze the space of solutions for worst-case fairness beyond demographics, and propose Blind Pareto Fairness (BPF), a method that leverages no-regret dynamics to recover a fair minimax classiﬁer that reduces worst-case risk of  any potential subgroup of sufﬁcient size, and guarantees that the remaining population receives the best possible level of service. BPF addresses  fairness beyond demographics, that is, it  does not rely on predeﬁned notions of at-risk groups, neither at train nor at test time. Our experimental results show that the proposed framework improves worst-case risk in multiple standard datasets, while simultaneously providing better levels of service for the remaining population, in comparison to competing methods.