Approaching fairness in machine learning

As machine learning increasingly affects domains protected by anti-discrimination law, there is much interest in the problem of algorithmically measuring and ensuring fairness in machine learning. Across academia and industry, experts are finally embracing this important research direction that has long been marred by sensationalist clickbait overshadowing scientific efforts. This sequence of posts is a sober take on the subtleties and difficulties in engaging productively with the issue of fairness in machine learning. Prudence is necessary, since a poor regulatory proposal could easily do more harm than doing nothing at all. In this first post, I will focus on a sticky idea I call demographic parity that through its many variants has been proposed as a fairness criterion in dozens of papers.