Is There a Contradiction Between Statistics and Fairness: From Intelligent Control to Explainable AI

Authors

Christian Servin, El Paso Community CollegeFollow
Vladik Kreinovich, The University of Texas at El PasoFollow

Publication Date

4-2020

Comments

Technical Report: UTEP-CS-20-28

Abstract

At first glance, there seems to be a contradiction between statistics and fairness: statistics-based AI techniques lead to unfair discrimination based on gender, race, and socio-economical status. This is not just a fault of probability techniques: similar problems can happen if we use fuzzy or other techniques for processing uncertainty. To attain fairness, several authors proposed not to rely on statistics and instead, explicitly add fairness constraints into decision making. In this paper, we show that the seeming contradiction between statistics and fairness is caused mostly by the fact that the existing systems use simplified models; contradictions disappear if we replace them with more adequate (and thus more complex) statistical models.