Unmasking the Shadows: Leveraging Symbolic Knowledge Extraction to Discover Biases and Unfairness in Opaque Predictive Models

This work explores the efficacy of symbolic knowledge-extraction (SKE) techniques in identifying biases and unfairness within opaque predictive models. Logic rules extracted from black-box predictors make it possible to verify if decisions are influenced by protected or sensitive features. In particular, the identification of biased or unfair decisions can be achieved through the evaluation of if-then rules, detecting the inclusion of protected and/or sensitive information in the rules’ precondition. The effectiveness of SKE in this regard is demonstrated here by conducting various simulations on a well-known data set for loan grant prediction. Our findings highlight the potential of SKE as a valuable tool to reveal biases and discrimination in opaque predictions, ultimately contributing to the pursuit of fair and transparent decision-making systems.