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On the (im)possibility of fairness

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arxiv 1609.07236 v1 pith:PULIGZRB submitted 2016-09-23 cs.CY stat.ML

classification cs.CYstat.ML
keywords spacedifferentfairnessalgorithmicassumptionsconstructdecisionaddition
verification ladder T0 review T1 audit T2 compute T3 formal
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What does it mean for an algorithm to be fair? Different papers use different notions of algorithmic fairness, and although these appear internally consistent, they also seem mutually incompatible. We present a mathematical setting in which the distinctions in previous papers can be made formal. In addition to characterizing the spaces of inputs (the "observed" space) and outputs (the "decision" space), we introduce the notion of a construct space: a space that captures unobservable, but meaningful variables for the prediction. We show that in order to prove desirable properties of the entire decision-making process, different mechanisms for fairness require different assumptions about the nature of the mapping from construct space to decision space. The results in this paper imply that future treatments of algorithmic fairness should more explicitly state assumptions about the relationship between constructs and observations.

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Cited by 3 Pith papers

Reviewed papers in the Pith corpus that reference this work. Sorted by Pith novelty score. Full citation record

  1. Unmasking LAION-5B: Age, Gender, Race, and Emotion Biases in Large-Scale Image Datasets

    cs.CV 2026-06 unverdicted novelty 6.0 of 10

    Empirical audit of LAION-2B-en and LAION-2B-multi finds overrepresentation of young adults, White people, and males plus stereotypical emotion associations across two attribute classifiers.

  2. Overcoming Fairness Trade-offs via Pre-processing: A Causal Perspective

    stat.ML 2025-01 conditional novelty 5.0 of 10

    Using the FiND world, a hypothetical fair world where protected attributes have no causal effect on the target, the authors show that fairness metrics become compatible and fairness aligns with accuracy, and that pre-...

  3. Operational AI Deployment Assurance: Governance-State Orchestration Under Threshold-Sensitive Deployment Conditions -- A Governance Framework for High-Stakes AI Systems

    cs.AI 2026-05 unverdicted novelty 3.0 of 10

    Introduces the OADA governance framework that links fairness disagreement, subgroup instability, and operational uncertainty to deployment-oriented assurance decisions, readiness classifications, and escalation states.

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