Improvement-focused causal recourse (ICR)

Author(s)
Gunnar König, Timo Freiesleben, Moritz Grosse-Wentrup
Abstract

Algorithmic recourse recommendations, such as Karimi et al.'s (2021) causal recourse (CR), inform stakeholders of how to act to revert unfavourable decisions. However, some actions lead to acceptance (i.e., revert the model's decision) but do not lead to improvement (i.e., may not revert the underlying real-world state). To recommend such actions is to recommend fooling the predictor. We introduce a novel method, Improvement-Focused Causal Recourse (ICR), which involves a conceptual shift: Firstly, we require ICR recommendations to guide towards improvement. Secondly, we do not tailor the recommendations to be accepted by a specific predictor. Instead, we leverage causal knowledge to design decision systems that predict accurately pre- and post-recourse. As a result, improvement guarantees translate into acceptance guarantees. We demonstrate that given correct causal knowledge, ICR, in contrast to existing approaches, guides towards both acceptance and improvement.

Organisation(s)
Research Group Neuroinformatics, Research Network Data Science, Vienna Cognitive Science Hub
External organisation(s)
Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München, Eberhard Karls Universität Tübingen, Universität Wien
Pages
11847-11855
No. of pages
9
Publication date
10-2022
Peer reviewed
Yes
Austrian Fields of Science 2012
102019 Machine learning, 102013 Human-computer interaction, 102001 Artificial intelligence
Portal url
https://ucris.univie.ac.at/portal/en/publications/improvementfocused-causal-recourse-icr(1b48b48e-d999-4545-a9ff-f03f478f3b84).html