Fairness Improvement with Multiple Protected Attributes: How Far Are We?
Existing research mostly improves the fairness of Machine Learning (ML) software regarding a single protected attribute at a time, but this is unrealistic given that many users have multiple protected attributes. This paper conducts an extensive study of fairness improvement regarding multiple protected attributes, covering 11 state-of-the-art fairness improvement methods. We analyze the effectiveness of these methods with different datasets, metrics, and ML models when considering multiple protected attributes. The results reveal that improving fairness for a single protected attribute can largely decrease fairness regarding unconsidered protected attributes. This decrease is observed in up to 88.3% of scenarios (57.5% on average). More surprisingly, we find little difference in accuracy loss when considering single and multiple protected attributes, indicating that accuracy can be maintained in the multiple-attribute paradigm. However, the effect on F1-score when handling two protected attributes is about twice that of a single attribute. This has important implications for future fairness research: reporting only accuracy as the ML performance metric, which is currently common in the literature, is inadequate.
Thu 18 AprDisplayed time zone: Lisbon change
14:00 - 15:30 | Security 3Research Track / Journal-first Papers / Software Engineering in Practice at Sophia de Mello Breyner Andresen Chair(s): Akond Rahman Auburn University | ||
14:00 15mTalk | An Empirical Study on Oculus Virtual Reality Applications: Security and Privacy Perspectives Research Track Hanyang Guo Hong Kong Baptist University; Sun Yat-sen University, Hong-Ning Dai Hong Kong Baptist University, Xiapu Luo The Hong Kong Polytechnic University, Zibin Zheng Sun Yat-sen University, Gengyang Xu Department of Computer Science, Hong Kong Baptist University, Fengliang He Department of Computer Science, Hong Kong Baptist University | ||
14:15 15mTalk | Fairness Improvement with Multiple Protected Attributes: How Far Are We? Research Track Zhenpeng Chen Nanyang Technological University, Jie M. Zhang King's College London, Federica Sarro University College London, Mark Harman Meta Platforms, Inc. and UCL Pre-print | ||
14:30 15mTalk | An Empirical Study of Data Disruption by Ransomware Attacks Research Track Yiwei Hou Tsinghua University, Lihua Guo Tsinghua University, Chijin Zhou Tsinghua University, Yiwen Xu Tsinghua University, Zijing Yin Tsinghua University, Shanshan Li National University of Defense Technology, Chengnian Sun University of Waterloo, Yu Jiang Tsinghua University | ||
14:45 15mTalk | Stop Pulling my Rug: Exposing Rug Pull Risks in Crypto Token to Investors Software Engineering in Practice Yuanhang Zhou Tsinghua University, Jingxuan Sun Beijing University of Posts and Telecommunications, Fuchen Ma Tsinghua University, Yuanliang Chen Tsinghua University, Zhen Yan Tsinghua University, Yu Jiang Tsinghua University | ||
15:00 7mTalk | A Closer Look at the Security Risks in the Rust Ecosystem Journal-first Papers Xiaoye Zheng Zhejiang University, Zhiyuan Wan Zhejiang University, Yun Zhang Hangzhou City University, Rui Chang Zhejiang University, David Lo Singapore Management University | ||
15:07 7mTalk | An Empirical Study of Vulnerabilities in Edge Frameworks to Support Security Testing Improvement Journal-first Papers | ||
15:14 7mTalk | A First Look at On-device Models in iOS Apps Journal-first Papers Han Hu Faculty of Information Technology, Monash University, Yujin Huang Monash University, Qiuyuan Chen Tencent Technology, Terry Yue Zhuo Monash University and CSIRO's Data61, Chunyang Chen Technical University of Munich (TUM) |