Distributive Justice and Fairness Metrics in Automated Decision-making: How Much Overlap Is There?

Understand

The advent of powerful prediction algorithms led to increased automation of high-stake decisions regarding the allocation of scarce resources such as government spending and welfare support.

• This automation bears the risk of perpetuating unwanted discrimination against vulnerable and historically disadvantaged groups.
• Research on algorithmic discrimination in computer science and other disciplines developed a plethora of fairness metrics to detect and correct discriminatory algorithms.
• Drawing on robust sociological and philosophical discourse on distributive justice, we identify the limitations and problematic implications of prominent fairness metrics.