papers

Publications (10)

cs.LG2021

Empirical observation of negligible fairness-accuracy trade-offs in machine learning for public policy

Kit T. Rodolfa, Hemank Lamba, Rayid Ghani

Growing use of machine learning in policy and social impact settings have raised concerns for fairness implications, especially for racial minorities. These concerns have generated…

cs.CY2022

A Conceptual Framework for Using Machine Learning to Support Child Welfare Decisions

Ka Ho Brian Chor, Kit T. Rodolfa, Rayid Ghani

Human services systems make key decisions that impact individuals in the society. The U.S. child welfare system makes such decisions, from screening-in hotline reports of suspected…

cs.CV2024

Locating and measuring marine aquaculture production from space: a computer vision approach in the French Mediterranean

Sebastian Quaade, Andrea Vallebueno, Olivia D. N. Alcabes +2

Aquaculture production -- the cultivation of aquatic plants and animals -- has grown rapidly since the 1990s, but sparse, self-reported and aggregate production data limits the eff…

cs.LG2021

An Empirical Comparison of Bias Reduction Methods on Real-World Problems in High-Stakes Policy Settings

Hemank Lamba, Kit T. Rodolfa, Rayid Ghani

Applications of machine learning (ML) to high-stakes policy settings -- such as education, criminal justice, healthcare, and social service delivery -- have grown rapidly in recent…

cs.LG2019

Aequitas: A Bias and Fairness Audit Toolkit

Pedro Saleiro, Benedict Kuester, Loren Hinkson +5

Recent work has raised concerns on the risk of unintended bias in AI systems being used nowadays that can affect individuals unfairly based on race, gender or religion, among other…

cs.CY2020

Case Study: Predictive Fairness to Reduce Misdemeanor Recidivism Through Social Service Interventions

Kit T. Rodolfa, Erika Salomon, Lauren Haynes +3

The criminal justice system is currently ill-equipped to improve outcomes of individuals who cycle in and out of the system with a series of misdemeanor offenses. Often due to cons…

cs.CY2025

Artificial Intelligence in Environmental Protection: The Importance of Organizational Context from a Field Study in Wisconsin

Nicolas Rothbacher, Kit T. Rodolfa, Mihir Bhaskar +3

Advances in Artificial Intelligence (AI) have generated widespread enthusiasm for the potential of AI to support our understanding and protection of the environment. As such tools…

cs.LG2023

On the Importance of Application-Grounded Experimental Design for Evaluating Explainable ML Methods

Kasun Amarasinghe, Kit T. Rodolfa, Sérgio Jesus +6

Most existing evaluations of explainable machine learning (ML) methods rely on simplifying assumptions or proxies that do not reflect real-world use cases; the handful of more robu…

cs.LG2023

Toward Operationalizing Pipeline-aware ML Fairness: A Research Agenda for Developing Practical Guidelines and Tools

Emily Black, Rakshit Naidu, Rayid Ghani +3

While algorithmic fairness is a thriving area of research, in practice, mitigating issues of bias often gets reduced to enforcing an arbitrarily chosen fairness metric, either by e…

cs.LG2025

Breaking the Cycle of Incarceration With Targeted Mental Health Outreach: A Case Study in Machine Learning for Public Policy

Kit T. Rodolfa, Erika Salomon, Jin Yao +9

Many incarcerated individuals face significant and complex challenges, including mental illness, substance dependence, and homelessness, yet jails and prisons are often poorly equi…