What's Fair About Individual Fairness?

Fleisher, W. What’s Fair about Individual Fairness. AIES '21: Proceedings of the 2021 AAAI/ACM Conference on AI, Ethics, and Society (July 2021) Pages 480–490. https://doi.org/10.1145/3461702.3462621

25 Pages Posted: 6 Apr 2021 Last revised: 1 Nov 2021

Date Written: July 1, 2021

Abstract

One of the main lines of research in algorithmic fairness involves individual fairness (IF) methods. Individual fairness is motivated by an intuitive principle I call "similar treatment," which requires that similar individuals be treated similarly. IF offers a precise account of this definition using distance metrics to evaluate the similarity of individuals. Proponents of individual fairness have argued that it gives the correct definition of algorithmic fairness, and that it should therefore be preferred to other methods for determining fairness. I argue that individual fairness cannot serve as a definition of fairness. Moreover, IF methods should not be given priority over other fairness methods, nor used in isolation from them. To support these conclusions, I describe four in-principle problems for individual fairness as a definition and as a method for ensuring fairness: (1) counterexamples show that similar treatment (and therefore IF) are insufficient to guarantee fairness; (2) IF methods for learning similarity metrics are at risk of encoding human implicit bias; (3) IF requires prior moral judgments, limiting its usefulness as a guide for fairness and undermining its claim to define fairness; and (4) the incommensurability of relevant moral values makes similarity metrics impossible for many tasks. In light of these limitations, I suggest that individual fairness cannot be a definition of fairness, and instead should be seen as one tool among many for ameliorating algorithmic bias.

Keywords: Algorithmic fairness, Individual fairness, Ethics of AI, Incommensurable values

undefined

Suggested Citation

Fleisher, Will, What's Fair About Individual Fairness? (July 1, 2021). Fleisher, W. What’s Fair about Individual Fairness. AIES '21: Proceedings of the 2021 AAAI/ACM Conference on AI, Ethics, and Society (July 2021) Pages 480–490. https://doi.org/10.1145/3461702.3462621, Available at SSRN: https://ssrn.com/abstract=3819799 or http://dx.doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.3819799

Will Fleisher (Contact Author)

Georgetown University ( email )

Washington, DC 20057
United States

0 References

    0 Citations

      Do you have a job opening that you would like to promote on SSRN?

      Paper statistics

      Downloads
      321
      Abstract Views
      2,092
      Rank
      195,449
      PlumX Metrics
      Plum Print visual indicator of research metrics
      • Citations
        • Citation Indexes: 5
      • Usage
        • Abstract Views: 2050
        • Downloads: 303
      • Captures
        • Readers: 2
      • Mentions
        • News Mentions: 3
      see details