arXiv Machine Learning

Decomposing Discrimination: Causal Mediation Analysis for AI-Driven Credit Decisions

The paper introduces a causal mediation framework to separate direct discrimination from structural inequality in AI-driven credit decisions. Using Pearl’s natural direct and indirect effects, it presents an identification strategy under treatment‑induced confounding and proposes a doubly‑robust estimator with efficiency guarantees. Empirical analysis of 89,465 mortgage applications shows that about 77% of racial denial disparities stem from financial mediators, while the remaining 23% represents a conservative lower bound on direct discrimination.

arXiv AI
Sep 2

Causal Evidentiary Governance for High-Risk Machine Learning Systems

The paper proposes Causal Evidentiary Governance (CEG), a framework that requires regulated institutions to maintain a versioned directed acyclic graph (DAG) separating allowable from disallowed causal pathways in high‑risk machine learning systems. CEG introduces the Causal Harm Rate to quantify prediction variation due to disallowed pathways and pairs each decision with a signed Decision‑Evidence Packet (DEP) that cryptographically links the prediction to the DAG and path‑specific attributions, enabling efficient inclusion proofs via a Merkle tree. Empirical validation on synthetic credit data and the German Credit dataset demonstrates that CEG more clearly isolates causal effects than traditional fairness metrics and that a proof‑of‑concept implementation shows operational feasibility with manageable performance tradeoffs.

By Samah Kareem, Bar{\i}\c{s} \c{C}elikta\c{s}
arXiv Machine Learning
Jul 31

The Role of Causality in Algorithmic Recourse

arXiv:2607. 28497v1 Announce Type: new Abstract: Algorithmic recourse aims to provide individuals with actionable changes to improve their predicted outcomes in high-stakes classification settings, such as loan and mortgage applications.

By Srikanth Avasarala, Varun Gupta, Shahin Jabbari, Saber Salehkaleybar, Juba Ziani
arXiv Machine Learning
Jun 26

Cross-Head Attention Uplift Network with Inverse Propensity Score under Unobserved Confounding

arXiv:2606. 27114v1 Announce Type: new Abstract: Uplift modeling, crucial for estimating individual treatment effects (ITE), faces dual challenges: flexibly leveraging inter-group similarity to enhance discriminative power and debiasing under unobserved confounding scenarios.

By Haoran Zhang, Chuanpu Li, Yuxin Fu, Bin Tong, Guan Wang, Bo Zheng, Feng Zhou
arXiv AI
Aug 28

Fairness Invariants: A Relational Approach to Explaining and Mitigating Fairness Bugs

The paper introduces REMI, a framework that treats counterfactual fairness as a relational invariant discovery problem. By learning over paired examples, REMI identifies input regions where fairness is violated and generates interpretable rule-based models—fairness invariants—that can block or relabel unfair predictions without retraining the underlying model. Experiments on symbolic and neural network programs show REMI localizes fairness bugs in over 83% of cases and reduces discriminatory decisions in black-box models by up to 70%.

By Ranit Debnath Akash, Ashish Kumar, Gang Tan, Saeid Tizpaz-Niari
arXiv AI
Jul 13

Tuning Derivatives for Causal Fairness in Machine Learning

arXiv:2605. 05882v2 Announce Type: replace-cross Abstract: 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.

By Filip Edstr\"om, Guilherme W. F. Barros, Tetiana Gorbach, Xavier de Luna