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Tuning derivatives for causal fairness in machine learning
Umeå University, Faculty of Social Sciences, Umeå School of Business and Economics (USBE), Statistics. (Stat4Reg)ORCID iD: 0009-0001-3326-2643
Umeå University, Faculty of Science and Technology, Department of Physics. (Integrated Science Lab)ORCID iD: 0000-0002-9313-3499
Umeå University, Faculty of Social Sciences, Umeå School of Business and Economics (USBE), Statistics.ORCID iD: 0000-0003-2135-9963
Umeå University, Faculty of Social Sciences, Umeå School of Business and Economics (USBE), Statistics.ORCID iD: 0000-0003-3187-1987
2026 (English)In: Machine Learning, ISSN 0885-6125, E-ISSN 1573-0565, Vol. 115, no 6, article id 126Article in journal (Refereed) Published
Abstract [en]

Artificial-intelligence systems are becoming ubiquitous in society, yet their predictions typically inherit biases with respect to protected attributes such as race, gender, or age. Classical fairness notions, most notably Statistical Parity (SP), demand that predictions be independent of the protected attributes, but are overly restrictive when these attributes influence mediating variables that are considered business necessities. Recent causal formulations relax SP by distinguishing allowed from not-allowed causal paths and by complementing SP with Predictive Parity (PP), requiring the predictor to replicate the legitimate influence of business necessities. Existing path-based definitions are mainly practical when applied to categorical attributes. This paper introduces a new framework for fairness in structural causal models that is tailored to continuous protected attributes. We formalize SP and PP through path-specific partial derivatives, establish conditions under which these criteria coincide with prior causal definitions, and characterize when a fair predictor, one that satisfies SP along not-allowed paths while achieving PP along allowed paths, exists. Building on this theory, we propose a fair tuning algorithm that either constructs such a predictor or, when not possible, allows for a trade-off between SP and PP. We present experiments on simulated and real data to evaluate our proposal, compare it with previously proposed methods, and show that it performs better when PP is considered.

Place, publisher, year, edition, pages
Springer, 2026. Vol. 115, no 6, article id 126
Keywords [en]
Structural causal models, Path-specific effects, Causal fairness, Statistical parity, Predictive parity
National Category
Probability Theory and Statistics Computer Sciences
Research subject
Statistics
Identifiers
URN: urn:nbn:se:umu:diva-253530DOI: 10.1007/s10994-026-07061-7ISI: 001769277200003Scopus ID: 2-s2.0-105039955532OAI: oai:DiVA.org:umu-253530DiVA, id: diva2:2063345
Projects
Machine learning to study causality with big datasets: towards methods yielding valid statistical conclusions
Funder
Wallenberg Foundations, MMW 2021.0020Available from: 2026-05-28 Created: 2026-05-28 Last updated: 2026-06-04Bibliographically approved

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Edström, FilipBarros, GuilhermeGorbach, Tetianade Luna, Xavier

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