Striking a Balance in Fairness for Dynamic Systems Through Reinforcement Learning

Abstract

While significant advancements have been made in the field of fair machine learning, the majority of studies focus on scenarios where the decision model operates on a static population. In this paper, we study fairness in dynamic systems where sequential decisions are made. Each decision may shift the underlying distribution of features or user behavior. We model the dynamic system through a Markov Decision Process (MDP). By acknowledging that traditional fairness notions and long-term fairness are distinct requirements that may not necessarily align with one another, we propose an algorithmic framework to integrate various fairness considerations with reinforcement learning using both pre-processing and in-processing approaches. Three case studies show that our method can strike a balance between traditional fairness notions, long-term fairness, and utility.