CAWA: Correlation-Based Adaptive Weight Adjustment via Effective Fields for Debiasing

Abstract

In real-world image classification tasks, neural networks often encounter significant challenges due to unexpected or deceptive correlations and biases inherent in the dataset. These biases can emerge from disproportionate data distributions, causing models to generalize poorly to new, unseen data. Such data distribution issues are particularly problematic compared to more balanced datasets because they lead the model to rely on bias attributes rather than intrinsic attributes. Ideally, the model should classify based on intrinsic attributes, but due to the influence of bias attributes, frequent misclassification occurs. Such biases compromise the fairness and accuracy of the model, especially in critical scenarios such as medical diagnosis, autonomous driving, or criminal justice, where misclassification can have significant consequences. To address these challenges, we propose an innovative two-stage approach aimed at mitigating bias more effectively and efficiently. © 2024 IEEE.