I believe that imbuing what the model does to make a prediction with the idea of "shortcuts" is oversimplifying a more complex issue. I don't think it's helpful

I believe that imbuing what the model does to make a prediction with the idea of "shortcuts" is oversimplifying a more complex issue. I don't think it's helpful to describe a model that can distinguish demographics as taking "shortcuts". I think that adds a layer of jargon that we then need to cut through to understand what is going on. There are plenty of tools that have been developed to enforce that models perform in a manner that is unbiased across some dimension (e.g., sex, or hospital, etc). (For example unsupervised domain adaptation.) I think that splitting the field with jargon makes it more difficult to follow the breadth of the field.