Towards Substantive Conceptions of Algorithmic Fairness: Normative Guidance from Equal Opportunity Doctrines

Abstract

In this work we use Equal Opportunity (EO) doctrines from political philosophy to make explicit the normative judgements embedded in different conceptions of algorithmic fairness. We contrast formal EO approaches that narrowly focus on fair contests at discrete decision points, with substantive EO doctrines that look at people’s fair life chances more holistically over the course of a lifetime. We use this taxonomy to provide a moral interpretation of the impossibility results as the incompatibility between different conceptions of a fair contest — foward-facing versus backward-facing — when people do not have fair life chances. We use this result to motivate substantive conceptions of algorithmic fairness and outline two plausible fair decision procedures based on the luck egalitarian doctrine of EO, and Rawls’s principle of fair equality of opportunity.