We are pleased to share the EWADA team member Dr Naman Goel has a new demo paper accepted by the premier AI conference – IJCAI 2025. The paper is a collaoboration with researchers from University of Edinburgh, Jain Family Institute, Utrecht University, and Accenture.

Gala et al. Fairness-Aware Interactive Target Variable Definition (Demo). Proceedings of the 34th International Joint Conference on Artificial Intelligence, IJCAI, 2025. Paper; Demo

Title: Fairness-Aware Interactive Target Variable Definition

Abstract:

Machine learning requires defining one’s target variable for predictions or decisions, a process that can have profound implications on fairness, since biases are often encoded in target variable definition itself, before any data collection or training. The downstream impacts of target variable definitions must be taken into account in order to responsibly develop, deploy, and use the algorithmic systems. We propose FairTargetSim (FTS), an interactive and simulations-based approach for this. We demonstrate FTS using the example of algorithmic hiring, grounded in real-world data and user-defined target variables. FTS is open-source; it can be used by algorithm developers, non-technical stakeholders, researchers, and educators in a number of ways. FTS is available at: http://tinyurl.com/ftsinterface. The video accompanying this paper is here: http://tinyurl.com/ijcaifts.