What Does Building a Fair AI Really Entail?

Organizations are employing algorithms to allocate valuable resources, design work schedules, analyze employee performance, and even decide whether employees can stay on the job. But while AI solves some problems, it creates new ones — and one of the stickiest is how to make sure that decisions shaped or made by AI are fair, and are perceived to be fair. Companies need to stop thinking about fairness — a complicated concept — as something they can address with the right automated processes. The author makes three recommendations: 1) Think of fairness as a collaborative act, 2) regard AI fairness as a negotiation between utility and humanity, and 3) remember that AI fairness involves perceptions of responsibility.