No. Any decider will be unfair in some way, whether it knows anything about history at all. The decider can be a coin flipper and it would still be biased. One can say that the unfairness is baked into the reality of base-rate difference.
The only way to fix this is not fixing the decider, but to just somehow make the base-rate difference disappear, or to compromise on the definition of fairness so that it’s not so stringent, and satisfiable.
And in common language and common discussion of algorithmic bias, “bias” is decidedly NOT merely a statistical definition. It always contains a moral judgment: violation of a fairness requirement. To say that a decider is biased is to say that the statistical pattern of its decision violates a fairness requirement.
The key message is that, by the common language definition, “bias” is unavoidable. No amount of trying to fix the decider will make it fair. Blinding it to the history will do nothing. The unfairness is in the base rate, and in the definition of fairness.
No. Any decider will be unfair in some way, whether it knows anything about history at all. The decider can be a coin flipper and it would still be biased. One can say that the unfairness is baked into the reality of base-rate difference.
The only way to fix this is not fixing the decider, but to just somehow make the base-rate difference disappear, or to compromise on the definition of fairness so that it’s not so stringent, and satisfiable.
And in common language and common discussion of algorithmic bias, “bias” is decidedly NOT merely a statistical definition. It always contains a moral judgment: violation of a fairness requirement. To say that a decider is biased is to say that the statistical pattern of its decision violates a fairness requirement.
The key message is that, by the common language definition, “bias” is unavoidable. No amount of trying to fix the decider will make it fair. Blinding it to the history will do nothing. The unfairness is in the base rate, and in the definition of fairness.