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  • Translation Tutorial: Engineering for Fairness: How a Firm Conceptual Distinction between Unfairness and Bias Makes it Easier to Address Un/Fairness
Title: Translation Tutorial: Engineering for Fairness: How a Firm Conceptual Distinction between Unfairness and Bias Makes it Easier to Address Un/Fairness
This translation tutorial will demonstrate that making fairness a tractable engineering goal requires demarcating a clear conceptual difference between bias and unfairness. Making this distinction demonstrates that bias is a property of technical judgments, whereas fairness is a property of value judgments. With that distinction in place, it is easier to articulate how engineering for fairness is an organizational or social function not reducible to a mathematical description. Using hypothetical and real-life examples I will show how product design practices would benefit from an explicit focus on value-driven decision processes. The upshot of these claims is that designing for fairness (and other ethical commitments) is more tractable if organizations build out capacity for the “soft” aspects of engineering practice. See: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y-Dj0cw5OtE&t=7s for the presentation.  more » « less
Award ID(s):
1704425
PAR ID:
10112010
Author(s) / Creator(s):
Date Published:
Journal Name:
Proceedings of the Conference on Fairness, Accountability, and Transparency
Format(s):
Medium: X
Sponsoring Org:
National Science Foundation
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