We initiate the study of strategic behavior in screening processes with multiple classifiers. We focus on two contrasting settings: a conjunctive setting in which an individual must satisfy all classifiers simultaneously, and a sequential setting in which an individual to succeed must satisfy classifiers one at a time. In other words, we introduce the combination of strategic classification with screening processes. We show that sequential screening pipelines exhibit new and surprising behavior where individuals can exploit the sequential ordering of the tests to zig-zag between classifiers without having to simultaneously satisfy all of them. We demonstrate an individual can obtain a positive outcome using a limited manipulation budget even when far from the intersection of the positive regions of every classifier. Finally, we consider a learner whose goal is to design a sequential screening process that is robust to such manipulations, and provide a construction for the learner that optimizes a natural objective.

翻译：我们首次研究了多分类器筛选过程中的策略性行为。我们聚焦于两种对比场景：合取场景中个体需同时满足所有分类器，而序列化场景中个体需依次满足每个分类器。换言之，我们引入了策略分类与筛选流程的结合。研究表明，序列化筛选流程展现出新颖且令人惊讶的行为——个体可利用测试的序贯顺序在分类器间“之字形”迂回，无需同时满足所有分类器。我们证明，即便个体远离所有分类器正区域交集，仍能通过有限的操纵预算获得正向结果。最后，我们考虑以设计抗操纵的稳健序列化筛选流程为目标的学习者，并为其提供了一种优化自然目标的构造方案。