Bias-Aware Hierarchical Clustering for detecting the discriminated groups of users in recommendation systems

作者:

Highlights:

• Unsupervised clustering methods may detect user disparities in recommendations.

• Bias-Aware Hierarchical Clustering detects more severe discrimination than other methods for different recommenders on two datasets.

• The method does not require information about sensitive attributes or user characteristics.

• A post-hoc model trained with descriptive user features provides explanations of these groups.

• The method may be used to design and evaluate fair recommender systems.

摘要

•Unsupervised clustering methods may detect user disparities in recommendations.•Bias-Aware Hierarchical Clustering detects more severe discrimination than other methods for different recommenders on two datasets.•The method does not require information about sensitive attributes or user characteristics.•A post-hoc model trained with descriptive user features provides explanations of these groups.•The method may be used to design and evaluate fair recommender systems.

论文关键词:Recommender system,System fairness,Bias detection,Model interpretability,Collaborative filtering

论文评审过程:Received 27 August 2020, Revised 30 December 2020, Accepted 14 January 2021, Available online 2 February 2021, Version of Record 2 February 2021.

论文官网地址:https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ipm.2021.102519