arXiv Machine Learning
Jun 2

Beyond Procedure: Substantive Fairness in Conformal Prediction

arXiv:2602. 16794v2 Announce Type: replace-cross Abstract: Conformal prediction (CP) offers distribution-free uncertainty quantification for machine learning models, yet its interplay with fairness in downstream decision-making remains underexplored.

By Pengqi Liu, Zijun Yu, Mouloud Belbahri, Arthur Charpentier, Masoud Asgharian, Jesse C. Cresswell
arXiv Computation and Language
Oct 21

Do LLMs Really Lack Difference Awareness? Uncovering Heuristic Substitution in Group-Differentiating Fairness

The paper examines whether large language models (LLMs) truly lack awareness of meaningful differences between social groups in fairness decisions. It proposes that instead of lacking difference awareness, LLMs often substitute a simpler equal‑treatment heuristic, a phenomenon called Fairness Heuristic Substitution. The authors introduce a Two‑stage Distinguish‑Decide (TDD) framework that separates the identification of relevant group differences from the fairness decision, and show that TDD outperforms one‑stage baselines across multiple benchmarks and models, while also revealing mechanistic evidence for the heuristic substitution hypothesis.

By Jingshen Zhang, Bo Wang, Yanlin Fu, Yuewen Dang, Dongming Zhao, Zifei Yu, Yuexian Hou
arXiv AI
Sep 25

Fair Like Us? Auditing LLM Alignment in Resource Allocation

The paper "Fair Like Us? Auditing LLM Alignment in Resource Allocation" presents a method for evaluating how large language models reason about fairness in the allocation of scarce, indivisible resources. It compares LLMs’ first‑person fairness judgments with human responses across various scenarios, finding that models tend to favor stricter fairness constraints, exhibit more self‑interested behavior, and are sensitive to framing. The study also shows that current fine‑tuning datasets struggle to align LLM judgments with human ones.

By Qishen Han, Hadi Hosseini, Joshua Kavner, Samarth Khanna, Sujoy Sikdar, Lirong Xia
arXiv Machine Learning
Jul 31

Procedural Fairness in Multi-Agent Bandits

arXiv:2601. 10600v2 Announce Type: replace-cross Abstract: In the context of multi-agent multi-armed bandits (MA-MAB), fairness is often reduced to outcomes: maximizing welfare, reducing inequality, or balancing utilities.

By Joshua Caiata, Carter Blair, Kate Larson