Publications

* denotes equal contribution

2024

1. ICML

   Detecting and Identifying Selection Structure in Sequential Data

   Yujia Zheng, Zeyu Tang, Yiwen Qiu, Bernhard Schölkopf, and Kun Zhang

   In Proceedings of the 41st International Conference on Machine Learning, 2024.

   ABSTRACT PDF

   We argue that the selective inclusion of data points based on latent objectives is common in practical situations, such as music sequences. Since this selection process often distorts statistical analysis, previous work primarily views it as a bias to be corrected and proposes various methods to mitigate its effect. However, while controlling this bias is crucial, selection also offers an opportunity to provide a deeper insight into the hidden generation process, as it is a fundamental mechanism underlying what we observe. In particular, overlooking selection in sequential data can lead to an incomplete or overcomplicated inductive bias in modeling, such as assuming a universal autoregressive structure for all dependencies. Therefore, rather than merely viewing it as a bias, we explore the causal structure of selection in sequential data to delve deeper into the complete causal process. Specifically, we show that selection structure is identifiable without any parametric assumptions or interventional experiments. Moreover, even in cases where selection variables coexist with latent confounders, we still establish the nonparametric identifiability under appropriate structural conditions. Meanwhile, we also propose a provably correct algorithm to detect and identify selection structures as well as other types of dependencies. The framework has been validated empirically on both synthetic data and real-world music.

2. arXivPreprint

   Steering LLMs Towards Unbiased Responses: A Causality-Guided Debiasing Framework

   Jingling Li*, Zeyu Tang*, Xiaoyu Liu, Peter Spirtes, Kun Zhang, Liu Leqi, and Yang Liu

   arXiv Preprint, 2024.

   ABSTRACT arXiv PDF

   Large language models (LLMs) can easily generate biased and discriminative responses. As LLMs tap into consequential decision-making (e.g., hiring and healthcare), it is of crucial importance to develop strategies to mitigate these biases. This paper focuses on social bias, tackling the association between demographic information and LLM outputs. We propose a causality-guided debiasing framework that utilizes causal understandings of (1) the data-generating process of the training corpus fed to LLMs, and (2) the internal reasoning process of LLM inference, to guide the design of prompts for debiasing LLM outputs through selection mechanisms. Our framework unifies existing de-biasing prompting approaches such as inhibitive instructions and in-context contrastive examples, and sheds light on new ways of debiasing by encouraging bias-free reasoning. Our strong empirical performance on real-world datasets demonstrates that our framework provides principled guidelines on debiasing LLM outputs even with only the black-box access.

3. ICLRSpotlight

   Procedural Fairness Through Decoupling Objectionable Data Generating Components

   Zeyu Tang, Jialu Wang, Yang Liu, Peter Spirtes, and Kun Zhang

   In Proceedings of the 12th International Conference on Learning Representations (preliminary version presented in NeurIPS 2023 AFT workshop), 2024.

   ABSTRACT arXiv PDF

   We reveal and address the frequently overlooked yet important issue of disguised procedural unfairness, namely, the potentially inadvertent alterations on the behavior of neutral (i.e., not problematic) aspects of data generating process, and/or the lack of procedural assurance of the greatest benefit of the least advantaged individuals. Inspired by John Rawls’s advocacy for pure procedural justice (Rawls, 1971; 2001), we view automated decision-making as a microcosm of social institutions, and consider how the data generating process itself can satisfy the requirements of procedural fairness. We propose a framework that decouples the objectionable data generating components from the neutral ones by utilizing reference points and the associated value instantiation rule. Our findings highlight the necessity of preventing disguised procedural unfairness, drawing attention not only to the objectionable data generating components that we aim to mitigate, but also more importantly, to the neutral components that we intend to keep unaffected.

2023

1. ACM CSUR

   What-is and How-to for Fairness in Machine Learning: A Survey, Reflection, and Perspective

   Zeyu Tang, Jiji Zhang, and Kun Zhang

   ACM Computing Surveys, 2023.

   ABSTRACT arXiv PDF

   Algorithmic fairness has attracted increasing attention in the machine learning community. Various definitions are proposed in the literature, but the differences and connections among them are not clearly addressed. In this paper, we review and reflect on various fairness notions previously proposed in machine learning literature, and make an attempt to draw connections to arguments in moral and political philosophy, especially theories of justice. We also consider fairness inquiries from a dynamic perspective, and further consider the long-term impact that is induced by current prediction and decision. In light of the differences in the characterized fairness, we present a flowchart that encompasses implicit assumptions and expected outcomes of different types of fairness inquiries on the data generating process, on the predicted outcome, and on the induced impact, respectively. This paper demonstrates the importance of matching the mission (which kind of fairness one would like to enforce) and the means (which spectrum of fairness analysis is of interest, what is the appropriate analyzing scheme) to fulfill the intended purpose.

2. ICMLAward

   Model Transferability With Responsive Decision Subjects

   Yatong Chen, Zeyu Tang, Kun Zhang, and Yang Liu

   In Proceedings of the 40th International Conference on Machine Learning (preliminary version won the BEST PAPER AWARD in ICML 2022 AdvML workshop), 2023.

   ABSTRACT arXiv PDF

   This paper studies model transferability when human decision subjects respond to a deployed machine learning model. In our setting, an agent or a user corresponds to a sample (X,Y) drawn from a distribution D and will face a model h and its classification result h(X). Agents can modify X to adapt to h, which will incur a distribution shift on (X,Y). Therefore, when training h, the learner will need to consider the subsequently "induced" distribution when the output model is deployed. Our formulation is motivated by applications where the deployed machine learning models interact with human agents, and will ultimately face responsive and interactive data distributions. We formalize the discussions of the transferability of a model by studying how the model trained on the available source distribution (data) would translate to the performance on the induced domain. We provide both upper bounds for the performance gap due to the induced domain shift, as well as lower bound for the trade-offs that a classifier has to suffer on either the source training distribution or the induced target distribution. We provide further instantiated analysis for two popular domain adaptation settings with covariate shift and target shift.

3. ICLR

   Tier Balancing: Towards Dynamic Fairness over Underlying Causal Factors

   Zeyu Tang, Yatong Chen, Yang Liu, and Kun Zhang

   In Proceedings of the 11th International Conference on Learning Representations (preliminary version presented in NeurIPS 2022 AFCP workshop), 2023.

   ABSTRACT arXiv PDF

   The pursuit of long-term fairness involves the interplay between decision-making and the underlying data generating process. In this paper, through causal modeling with a directed acyclic graph (DAG) on the decision-distribution interplay, we investigate the possibility of achieving long-term fairness from a dynamic perspective. We propose Tier Balancing, a technically more challenging but more natural notion to achieve in the context of long-term, dynamic fairness analysis. Different from previous fairness notions that are defined purely on observed variables, our notion goes one step further, capturing behind-the-scenes situation changes on the unobserved latent causal factors that directly carry out the influence from the current decision to the future data distribution. Under the specified dynamics, we prove that in general one cannot achieve the long-term fairness goal only through one-step interventions. Furthermore, in the effort of approaching long-term fairness, we consider the mission of "getting closer to" the long-term fairness goal and present possibility and impossibility results accordingly.

2022

1. CLeaR

   Attainability and Optimality: The Equalized Odds Fairness Revisited

   Zeyu Tang, and Kun Zhang

   In Proceedings of the 1st Conference on Causal Learning and Reasoning, 2022.

   ABSTRACT arXiv PDF

   Fairness of machine learning algorithms has been of increasing interest. In order to suppress or eliminate discrimination in prediction, various notions as well as approaches have been proposed to impose fairness. Given a notion of fairness, an essential problem is then whether or not it can always be attained, even if with an unlimited amount of data. This issue is, however, not well addressed yet. In this paper, focusing on the Equalized Odds notion of fairness, we consider the attainability of this criterion and, furthermore, if it is attainable, the optimality of the prediction performance under various settings. In particular, for prediction performed by a deterministic function of input features, we give conditions under which Equalized Odds can hold true; if the stochastic prediction is acceptable, we show that under mild assumptions, fair predictors can always be derived. For classification, we further prove that compared to enforcing fairness by post-processing, one can always benefit from exploiting all available features during training and get potentially better prediction performance while remaining fair. Moreover, while stochastic prediction can attain Equalized Odds with theoretical guarantees, we also discuss its limitation and potential negative social impacts.