Fairness in Machine Learning: Against False Positive Rate Equality as a Measure of Fairness
As machine learning informs increasingly consequential decisions, different metrics have been proposed for measuring algorithmic bias or unfairness. Two popular “fairness measures” are calibration and equality of false positive rate. Each measure seems intuitively important, but notably, it is usual...
Auteur principal: | |
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Type de support: | Électronique Article |
Langue: | Anglais |
Vérifier la disponibilité: | HBZ Gateway |
Journals Online & Print: | |
Fernleihe: | Fernleihe für die Fachinformationsdienste |
Publié: |
Brill
2022
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Dans: |
Journal of moral philosophy
Année: 2022, Volume: 19, Numéro: 1, Pages: 49-78 |
Sujets non-standardisés: | B
statistical discrimination
B Équité B algorithmic bias |
Accès en ligne: |
Accès probablement gratuit Volltext (lizenzpflichtig) Volltext (lizenzpflichtig) |
Résumé: | As machine learning informs increasingly consequential decisions, different metrics have been proposed for measuring algorithmic bias or unfairness. Two popular “fairness measures” are calibration and equality of false positive rate. Each measure seems intuitively important, but notably, it is usually impossible to satisfy both measures. For this reason, a large literature in machine learning speaks of a “fairness tradeoff” between these two measures. This framing assumes that both measures are, in fact, capturing something important. To date, philosophers have seldom examined this crucial assumption, and examined to what extent each measure actually tracks a normatively important property. This makes this inevitable statistical conflict – between calibration and false positive rate equality – an important topic for ethics. In this paper, I give an ethical framework for thinking about these measures and argue that, contrary to initial appearances, false positive rate equality is in fact morally irrelevant and does not measure fairness. |
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ISSN: | 1745-5243 |
Contient: | Enthalten in: Journal of moral philosophy
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Persistent identifiers: | DOI: 10.1163/17455243-20213439 |