Evaluating and Correcting Performative Effects of Decision Support Systems via Causal Domain Shift

arXiv:2403.00886v1 Announce Type: new
Abstract: When predicting a target variable $Y$ from features $X$, the prediction $\hat{Y}$ can be performative: an agent might act on this prediction, affecting the value of $Y$ that we eventually observe. Performative predictions are deliberately prevalent in algorithmic decision support, where a Decision Support System (DSS) provides a prediction for an agent to affect the value of the target variable. When deploying a DSS in high-stakes settings (e.g. healthcare, law, predictive policing, or child welfare …

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