Deontological Ethics By Monotonicity Shape Constraints

Serena Wang, Maya Gupta
Proceedings of the Twenty Third International Conference on Artificial Intelligence and Statistics, PMLR 108:2043-2054, 2020.

Abstract

We demonstrate how easy it is for modern machine-learned systems to violate common deontological ethical principles and social norms such as “favor the less fortunate,” and “do not penalize good attributes.” We propose that in some cases such ethical principles can be incorporated into a machine-learned model by adding shape constraints that constrain the model to respond only positively to relevant inputs. We analyze the relationship between these deontological constraints that act on individuals and the consequentialist group-based fairness goals of one-sided statistical parity and equal opportunity. This strategy works with sensitive attributes that are Boolean or real-valued such as income and age, and can help produce more responsible and trustworthy AI.

Cite this Paper

BibTeX
@InProceedings{pmlr-v108-wang20e, title = {Deontological Ethics By Monotonicity Shape Constraints}, author = {Wang, Serena and Gupta, Maya}, booktitle = {Proceedings of the Twenty Third International Conference on Artificial Intelligence and Statistics}, pages = {2043--2054}, year = {2020}, editor = {Chiappa, Silvia and Calandra, Roberto}, volume = {108}, series = {Proceedings of Machine Learning Research}, month = {26--28 Aug}, publisher = {PMLR}, pdf = {http://proceedings.mlr.press/v108/wang20e/wang20e.pdf}, url = {https://proceedings.mlr.press/v108/wang20e.html}, abstract = {We demonstrate how easy it is for modern machine-learned systems to violate common deontological ethical principles and social norms such as “favor the less fortunate,” and “do not penalize good attributes.” We propose that in some cases such ethical principles can be incorporated into a machine-learned model by adding shape constraints that constrain the model to respond only positively to relevant inputs. We analyze the relationship between these deontological constraints that act on individuals and the consequentialist group-based fairness goals of one-sided statistical parity and equal opportunity. This strategy works with sensitive attributes that are Boolean or real-valued such as income and age, and can help produce more responsible and trustworthy AI. } }
Endnote
%0 Conference Paper %T Deontological Ethics By Monotonicity Shape Constraints %A Serena Wang %A Maya Gupta %B Proceedings of the Twenty Third International Conference on Artificial Intelligence and Statistics %C Proceedings of Machine Learning Research %D 2020 %E Silvia Chiappa %E Roberto Calandra %F pmlr-v108-wang20e %I PMLR %P 2043--2054 %U https://proceedings.mlr.press/v108/wang20e.html %V 108 %X We demonstrate how easy it is for modern machine-learned systems to violate common deontological ethical principles and social norms such as “favor the less fortunate,” and “do not penalize good attributes.” We propose that in some cases such ethical principles can be incorporated into a machine-learned model by adding shape constraints that constrain the model to respond only positively to relevant inputs. We analyze the relationship between these deontological constraints that act on individuals and the consequentialist group-based fairness goals of one-sided statistical parity and equal opportunity. This strategy works with sensitive attributes that are Boolean or real-valued such as income and age, and can help produce more responsible and trustworthy AI.
APA
Wang, S. & Gupta, M.. (2020). Deontological Ethics By Monotonicity Shape Constraints. Proceedings of the Twenty Third International Conference on Artificial Intelligence and Statistics, in Proceedings of Machine Learning Research 108:2043-2054 Available from https://proceedings.mlr.press/v108/wang20e.html.

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