---
OA_place: publisher
OA_type: gold
_id: '22321'
abstract:
- lang: eng
  text: 'Runtime fairness is not a one-time constraint but a dynamic property evaluated
    over a sequence of decisions. To ensure fairness at runtime, it is necessary to
    account for past decisions, information neglected by conventional, static classifiers.
    Traditional fairness shields enforce runtime fairness abruptly, by intervening
    deterministically whenever a sequence of decisions violates the target for a running
    fairness measure. This motivates our main conceptual contribution: energy shields.
    An energy shield is a novel, lightweight, adaptive controller that monitors a
    sequence of decisions and intervenes probabilistically to ensure runtime fairness
    smoothly, by utilizing physics-inspired energy functions to nudge the sequence
    toward fairness: the more unfair the decisions, the stronger the nudging force
    becomes. This makes energy shields the first fairness shields to provide both
    short-term safety and long-term liveness guarantees. Safety ensures that the running
    fairness measure stays within a running target interval with high probability,
    and liveness ensures that the limit of the fairness measure lies within the limit
    target interval. Intuitively, the short-term specifies the tolerated fairness
    values and the long-term specifies the desired fairness values. We also provide
    a synthesis procedure for constructing the least intrusive energy shield for a
    given target specification, and demonstrate its efficiency experimentally. We
    evaluate our energy shields against existing fairness shields through the lens
    of short- and long-term fairness.'
acknowledgement: 'This work has been supported by the European Research Council under
  Grant No.: ERC-2020-AdG 101020093.'
article_processing_charge: Yes
arxiv: 1
author:
- first_name: Filip
  full_name: Cano Cordoba, Filip
  id: 708cad98-e86a-11ef-8098-bdae2d7c6af1
  last_name: Cano Cordoba
  orcid: 0000-0002-0783-904X
- first_name: Thomas A
  full_name: Henzinger, Thomas A
  id: 40876CD8-F248-11E8-B48F-1D18A9856A87
  last_name: Henzinger
  orcid: 0000-0002-2985-7724
- first_name: Konstantin
  full_name: Kueffner, Konstantin
  id: 8121a2d0-dc85-11ea-9058-af578f3b4515
  last_name: Kueffner
  orcid: 0000-0001-8974-2542
citation:
  ama: 'Cano Cordoba F, Henzinger TA, Kueffner K. Energy shields for fairness. In:
    <i>Proceedings of the 2026 ACM Conference on Fairness, Accountability, and Transparency</i>.
    Association for Computing Machinery; 2026:4243-4275. doi:<a href="https://doi.org/10.1145/3805689.3806807">10.1145/3805689.3806807</a>'
  apa: 'Cano Cordoba, F., Henzinger, T. A., &#38; Kueffner, K. (2026). Energy shields
    for fairness. In <i>Proceedings of the 2026 ACM Conference on Fairness, Accountability,
    and Transparency</i> (pp. 4243–4275). Montreal, Canada: Association for Computing
    Machinery. <a href="https://doi.org/10.1145/3805689.3806807">https://doi.org/10.1145/3805689.3806807</a>'
  chicago: Cano Cordoba, Filip, Thomas A Henzinger, and Konstantin Kueffner. “Energy
    Shields for Fairness.” In <i>Proceedings of the 2026 ACM Conference on Fairness,
    Accountability, and Transparency</i>, 4243–75. Association for Computing Machinery,
    2026. <a href="https://doi.org/10.1145/3805689.3806807">https://doi.org/10.1145/3805689.3806807</a>.
  ieee: F. Cano Cordoba, T. A. Henzinger, and K. Kueffner, “Energy shields for fairness,”
    in <i>Proceedings of the 2026 ACM Conference on Fairness, Accountability, and
    Transparency</i>, Montreal, Canada, 2026, pp. 4243–4275.
  ista: 'Cano Cordoba F, Henzinger TA, Kueffner K. 2026. Energy shields for fairness.
    Proceedings of the 2026 ACM Conference on Fairness, Accountability, and Transparency.
    FAccT: Conference on Fairness, Accountability and Transparency, 4243–4275.'
  mla: Cano Cordoba, Filip, et al. “Energy Shields for Fairness.” <i>Proceedings of
    the 2026 ACM Conference on Fairness, Accountability, and Transparency</i>, Association
    for Computing Machinery, 2026, pp. 4243–75, doi:<a href="https://doi.org/10.1145/3805689.3806807">10.1145/3805689.3806807</a>.
  short: F. Cano Cordoba, T.A. Henzinger, K. Kueffner, in:, Proceedings of the 2026
    ACM Conference on Fairness, Accountability, and Transparency, Association for
    Computing Machinery, 2026, pp. 4243–4275.
conference:
  end_date: 2026-06-28
  location: Montreal, Canada
  name: 'FAccT: Conference on Fairness, Accountability and Transparency'
  start_date: 2026-06-25
corr_author: '1'
das_tickbox: '0'
date_created: 2026-07-14T05:32:45Z
date_published: 2026-07-01T00:00:00Z
date_updated: 2026-07-22T06:15:56Z
day: '01'
ddc:
- '000'
department:
- _id: ToHe
doi: 10.1145/3805689.3806807
ec_funded: 1
external_id:
  arxiv:
  - '2605.24926'
file:
- access_level: open_access
  checksum: 21e648ea3b529f0df7545ad4b31b0ef4
  content_type: application/pdf
  creator: dernst
  date_created: 2026-07-16T09:23:15Z
  date_updated: 2026-07-16T09:23:15Z
  file_id: '22348'
  file_name: 2026_ACMFACCT_Cano.pdf
  file_size: 3129128
  relation: main_file
  success: 1
file_date_updated: 2026-07-16T09:23:15Z
has_accepted_license: '1'
language:
- iso: eng
license: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/
month: '07'
oa: 1
oa_version: Published Version
page: 4243 - 4275
project:
- _id: 62781420-2b32-11ec-9570-8d9b63373d4d
  call_identifier: H2020
  grant_number: '101020093'
  name: Vigilant Algorithmic Monitoring of Software
publication: Proceedings of the 2026 ACM Conference on Fairness, Accountability, and
  Transparency
publication_status: published
publisher: Association for Computing Machinery
quality_controlled: '1'
researchdata_availability: no
scopus_import: '1'
status: public
supplementarymaterial: yes
title: Energy shields for fairness
tmp:
  image: /images/cc_by.png
  legal_code_url: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/legalcode
  name: Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International Public License (CC-BY 4.0)
  short: CC BY (4.0)
type: conference
user_id: 2DF688A6-F248-11E8-B48F-1D18A9856A87
year: '2026'
...