Strategies to Mitigate Age-Related Bias in Machine Learning: Scoping Review
Bibliographic record
Abstract
BACKGROUND: Research suggests that digital ageism, that is, age-related bias, is present in the development and deployment of machine learning (ML) models. Despite the recognition of the importance of this problem, there is a lack of research that specifically examines the strategies used to mitigate age-related bias in ML models and the effectiveness of these strategies. OBJECTIVE: To address this gap, we conducted a scoping review of mitigation strategies to reduce age-related bias in ML. METHODS: We followed a scoping review methodology framework developed by Arksey and O'Malley. The search was developed in conjunction with an information specialist and conducted in 6 electronic databases (IEEE Xplore, Scopus, Web of Science, CINAHL, EMBASE, and the ACM digital library), as well as 2 additional gray literature databases (OpenGrey and Grey Literature Report). RESULTS: We identified 8 publications that attempted to mitigate age-related bias in ML approaches. Age-related bias was introduced primarily due to a lack of representation of older adults in the data. Efforts to mitigate bias were categorized into one of three approaches: (1) creating a more balanced data set, (2) augmenting and supplementing their data, and (3) modifying the algorithm directly to achieve a more balanced result. CONCLUSIONS: Identifying and mitigating related biases in ML models is critical to fostering fairness, equity, inclusion, and social benefits. Our analysis underscores the ongoing need for rigorous research and the development of effective mitigation approaches to address digital ageism, ensuring that ML systems are used in a way that upholds the interests of all individuals. TRIAL REGISTRATION: Open Science Framework AMG5P; https://osf.io/amg5p.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame distilled prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. Learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and 10,348 direct Gemma labels. Candidate is the union of thresholded teacher heads; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels or direct frontier model labels.
Codex and Gemma teacher scores by category
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.001 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.000 | 0.001 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Open science | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Research integrity | 0.000 | 0.001 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one teacher head, not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".