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Poster
Fairness in Learning: Classic and Contextual Bandits
Matthew Joseph · Michael Kearns · Jamie Morgenstern · Aaron Roth

Mon Dec 05 09:00 AM -- 12:30 PM (PST) @ Area 5+6+7+8 #25
in Monday Posters »

We introduce the study of fairness in multi-armed bandit problems. Our fairness definition demands that, given a pool of applicants, a worse applicant is never favored over a better one, despite a learning algorithm’s uncertainty over the true payoffs. In the classic stochastic bandits problem we provide a provably fair algorithm based on “chained” confidence intervals, and prove a cumulative regret bound with a cubic dependence on the number of arms. We further show that any fair algorithm must have such a dependence, providing a strong separation between fair and unfair learning that extends to the general contextual case. In the general contextual case, we prove a tight connection between fairness and the KWIK (Knows What It Knows) learning model: a KWIK algorithm for a class of functions can be transformed into a provably fair contextual bandit algorithm and vice versa. This tight connection allows us to provide a provably fair algorithm for the linear contextual bandit problem with a polynomial dependence on the dimension, and to show (for a different class of functions) a worst-case exponential gap in regret between fair and non-fair learning algorithms.

Keywords: Bandit Algorithms · Learning Theory · Online Learning

Author Information

Matthew Joseph (University of Pennsylvania)
Michael Kearns (University of Pennsylvania)

Michael Kearns is Professor and National Center Chair in the Computer and Information Science department at the University of Pennsylvania. His research interests include topics in machine learning, algorithmic game theory, social networks, and computational finance. Prior to joining the Penn faculty, he spent a decade at AT&T/Bell Labs, where he was head of AI Research. He is co-director of Penn’s Warren Center for Network and Data Sciences (warrencenter.upenn.edu), and founder of Penn’s Networked and Social Systems Engineering (NETS) undergraduate program (www.nets.upenn.edu). Kearns consults extensively in technology and finance, and is a Fellow of the Association for the Advancement of Artificial Intelligence and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.

Jamie Morgenstern (University of Pennsylvania)
Aaron Roth (University of Pennsylvania)

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