FairICP: Encouraging Equalized Odds via Inverse Conditional Permutation

Abstract

$\textit{Equalized odds}$, an important notion of algorithmic fairness, aims to ensure that sensitive variables, such as race and gender, do not unfairly influence the algorithm's prediction when conditioning on the true outcome. Despite rapid advancements, current research primarily focuses on equalized odds violations caused by a single sensitive attribute, leaving the challenge of simultaneously accounting for multiple attributes under-addressed. We bridge this gap by introducing an in-processing fairness-aware learning approach, FairICP, which integrates adversarial learning with a novel inverse conditional permutation scheme. FairICP offers a flexible and efficient scheme to promote equalized odds under fairness conditions described by complex and multi-dimensional sensitive attributes. The efficacy and adaptability of our method are demonstrated through both simulation studies and empirical analyses of real-world datasets.