On the Need and Applicability of Causality for Fair Machine Learning

Besides its common use cases in epidemiology, political, and social sciences, causality turns out to be crucial in evaluating the fairness of automated decisions, both in a legal and everyday sense. We provide arguments and examples, of why causality is particularly important for fairness evaluation. In particular, we point out the social impact of non-causal predictions and the legal anti-discrimination process that relies on causal claims. We conclude with a discussion about the challenges and limitations of applying causality in practical scenarios as well as possible solutions.