"Ignorance and Prejudice" in Software FairnessTechnical Track
Thu 27 May 2021 22:15 - 22:35 at Blended Sessions Room 1 - 3.1.1. Social Equality and Fairness #2
Machine learning software can be unfair when making human-related decisions, having prejudices over certain groups of people. Existing work primarily focuses on proposing fairness metrics and presenting fairness improvement approaches. It remains unclear how key aspect of any machine learning system, such as the feature set and training data, affect fairness. This paper presents results from a comprehensive study that addresses this problem. We find that extending the feature set plays a significant role in improving fairness (with an average increase rate of 38%). Importantly, and contrary to widely-held beliefs that greater fairness often corresponds to lower accuracy, our findings reveal that extending the feature set improves both accuracy and fairness. Perhaps also surprisingly, we find that extending training data does not improve fairness. Our results suggest such data enhancement can further reduce fairness when feature sets are insufficient; an important cautionary finding for practising software engineers.
Thu 27 MayDisplayed time zone: Amsterdam, Berlin, Bern, Rome, Stockholm, Vienna change
10:00 - 10:55 | 3.1.1. Social Equality and Fairness #2Journal-First Papers / SEIS - Software Engineering in Society / Technical Track at Blended Sessions Room 1 +12h Chair(s): Alexander Serebrenik Eindhoven University of Technology | ||
10:00 15mPaper | A First Look at Human Values-Violation in App ReviewsSEIS SEIS - Software Engineering in Society Humphrey Obie Monash University, Waqar Hussain Monash University, Xin Xia Huawei Software Engineering Application Technology Lab, John Grundy Monash University, Li Li Monash University, Burak Turhan Monash University, Jon Whittle CSIRO's Data61 and Monash University, Mojtaba Shahin Monash University Pre-print Media Attached | ||
10:15 20mFull-paper | "Ignorance and Prejudice" in Software FairnessTechnical Track Technical Track Pre-print Media Attached | ||
10:35 20mPaper | Gender Differences in Personality Traits of Software EngineersJournal-First Journal-First Papers Daniel Russo Department of Computer Science, Aalborg University, Klaas-Jan Stol University College Cork and Lero, Ireland Link to publication DOI Pre-print Media Attached |
22:00 - 22:55 | 3.1.1. Social Equality and Fairness #2Journal-First Papers / Technical Track / SEIS - Software Engineering in Society at Blended Sessions Room 1 | ||
22:00 15mPaper | A First Look at Human Values-Violation in App ReviewsSEIS SEIS - Software Engineering in Society Humphrey Obie Monash University, Waqar Hussain Monash University, Xin Xia Huawei Software Engineering Application Technology Lab, John Grundy Monash University, Li Li Monash University, Burak Turhan Monash University, Jon Whittle CSIRO's Data61 and Monash University, Mojtaba Shahin Monash University Pre-print Media Attached | ||
22:15 20mFull-paper | "Ignorance and Prejudice" in Software FairnessTechnical Track Technical Track Pre-print Media Attached | ||
22:35 20mPaper | Gender Differences in Personality Traits of Software EngineersJournal-First Journal-First Papers Daniel Russo Department of Computer Science, Aalborg University, Klaas-Jan Stol University College Cork and Lero, Ireland Link to publication DOI Pre-print Media Attached |