Energy Shields for Runtime Fairness

A new arXiv preprint introduces energy shields, a lightweight adaptive controller for runtime fairness. Unlike traditional deterministic fairness shields that intervene abruptly when a sequence of decisions violates a target fairness measure, energy shields use physics-inspired energy functions to probabilistically nudge decision sequences toward fairness. The more unfair the decisions, the stronger the nudging force. This is the first fairness shield to provide both short-term and long-term fairness guarantees while maintaining smooth intervention.