LAUSR.org creates dashboard-style pages of related content for over 1.5 million academic articles. Sign Up to like articles & get recommendations!

Weapons of moral construction? On the value of fairness in algorithmic decision-making

Photo from wikipedia

Fairness is one of the most prominent values in the Ethics and Artificial Intelligence (AI) debate and, specifically, in the discussion on algorithmic decision-making (ADM). However, while the need for… Click to show full abstract

Fairness is one of the most prominent values in the Ethics and Artificial Intelligence (AI) debate and, specifically, in the discussion on algorithmic decision-making (ADM). However, while the need for fairness in ADM is widely acknowledged, the very concept of fairness has not been sufficiently explored so far. Our paper aims to fill this gap and claims that an ethically informed re-definition of fairness is needed to adequately investigate fairness in ADM. To achieve our goal, after an introductory section aimed at clarifying the aim and structure of the paper, in section “Fairness in algorithmic decision-making” we provide an overview of the state of the art of the discussion on fairness in ADM and show its shortcomings; in section “Fairness as an ethical value”, we pursue an ethical inquiry into the concept of fairness, drawing insights from accounts of fairness developed in moral philosophy, and define fairness as an ethical value. In particular, we argue that fairness is articulated in a distributive and socio-relational dimension; it comprises three main components: fair equality of opportunity , equal right to justification , and fair equality of relationship ; these components are grounded in the need to respect persons both as persons and as particular individuals . In section “Fairness in algorithmic decision-making revised”, we analyze the implications of our redefinition of fairness as an ethical value on the discussion of fairness in ADM and show that each component of fairness has profound effects on the criteria that ADM ought to meet. Finally, in section “Concluding remarks”, we sketch some broader implications and conclude.

Keywords: algorithmic decision; fairness algorithmic; value; fairness; decision making

Journal Title: Ethics and Information Technology
Year Published: 2022

Link to full text (if available)


Share on Social Media:                               Sign Up to like & get
recommendations!

Related content

More Information              News              Social Media              Video              Recommended



                Click one of the above tabs to view related content.