Fairness and Artificial Intelligence

The notion of fairness figures quite importantly in the increasing corpus of ethics codes regarding the responsible use of AI. We aim to clear up some of the uncertainties surrounding the concept of fairness, and the familiar notions of justice and equality. We do not put forward an exhaustive overview of all relevant literature, nor do we promote a decisive view of what these concepts should entail. Instead, we clarify the role that these concepts can perform in the debate on AI and the (normative) considerations that come with that role. Taking one particular interpretation of fairness as our point of departure (fairness as nonarbitrariness), we first investigate the distinction and relationship between procedural and substantive conceptions of fairness. We build upon this distinction to further analyze the relationship between fairness, justice, and equality. We start with an exploration of several different and theoretically underpinned, elaborated conceptions of justice . In parallel, we discuss the challenges these conceptions face in light of technological innovations. In a final step, we consider the limitations of techno-solutionism and attempts to formalize fairness by design in particular.