Caesar AI Atlas

Incompatibility Of Fairness Metrics

Caesar AI Atlas Definition

Incompatibility of fairness metrics is the principle that different formal definitions of fairness may conflict and cannot always be satisfied at the same time. It means fairness must be selected and justified in context, based on the use case, affected groups, risks, and harms being addressed.

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Incompatibility Of Fairness Metrics Source

The idea that some notions of fairness are mutually incompatible and cannot be satisfied simultaneously. As a result, there is no single universal metric for quantifying fairness that can be applied to all ML problems. While this may seem discouraging, incompatibility of fairness metrics doesn't imply that fairness efforts are fruitless. Instead, it suggests that fairness must be defined contextually for a given ML problem, with the goal of preventing harms specific to its use cases. See "On the (im)possibility of fairness" for a more detailed discussion of the incompatibility of fairness metrics.

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