Effort-aware Fairness: Incorporating a Philosophy-informed, Human-centered Notion of Effort into Algorithmic Fairness Metrics

Fuente: arXiv
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Main Authors: Nguyen, Tin Trung, Xu, Jiannan, Che, Zora, Nguyen-Le, Phuong-Anh, Dandamudi, Rushil, Braman, Donald, Huang, Furong, Daumé III, Hal, Jelveh, Zubin
Format: Preprint
Published: 2025
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author Nguyen, Tin Trung
Xu, Jiannan
Che, Zora
Nguyen-Le, Phuong-Anh
Dandamudi, Rushil
Braman, Donald
Huang, Furong
Daumé III, Hal
Jelveh, Zubin
author_facet Nguyen, Tin Trung
Xu, Jiannan
Che, Zora
Nguyen-Le, Phuong-Anh
Dandamudi, Rushil
Braman, Donald
Huang, Furong
Daumé III, Hal
Jelveh, Zubin
contents Although popularized AI fairness metrics, e.g., demographic parity, have uncovered bias in AI-assisted decision-making outcomes, they do not consider how much effort one has spent to get to where one is today in the input feature space. However, the notion of effort is important in how Philosophy and humans understand fairness. We propose a philosophy-informed approach to conceptualize and evaluate Effort-aware Fairness (EaF), grounded in the concept of Force, which represents the temporal trajectory of predictive features coupled with inertia. Besides theoretical formulation, our empirical contributions include: (1) a pre-registered human subjects experiment, which shows that for both stages of the (individual) fairness evaluation process, people consider the temporal trajectory of a predictive feature more than its aggregate value; (2) pipelines to compute Effort-aware Individual/Group Fairness in the criminal justice and personal finance contexts. Our work may enable AI model auditors to uncover and potentially correct unfair decisions against individuals who have spent significant efforts to improve but are still stuck with systemic disadvantages outside their control.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2505_19317
institution arXiv
publishDate 2025
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle Effort-aware Fairness: Incorporating a Philosophy-informed, Human-centered Notion of Effort into Algorithmic Fairness Metrics
Nguyen, Tin Trung
Xu, Jiannan
Che, Zora
Nguyen-Le, Phuong-Anh
Dandamudi, Rushil
Braman, Donald
Huang, Furong
Daumé III, Hal
Jelveh, Zubin
Artificial Intelligence
Computers and Society
Human-Computer Interaction
Machine Learning
Although popularized AI fairness metrics, e.g., demographic parity, have uncovered bias in AI-assisted decision-making outcomes, they do not consider how much effort one has spent to get to where one is today in the input feature space. However, the notion of effort is important in how Philosophy and humans understand fairness. We propose a philosophy-informed approach to conceptualize and evaluate Effort-aware Fairness (EaF), grounded in the concept of Force, which represents the temporal trajectory of predictive features coupled with inertia. Besides theoretical formulation, our empirical contributions include: (1) a pre-registered human subjects experiment, which shows that for both stages of the (individual) fairness evaluation process, people consider the temporal trajectory of a predictive feature more than its aggregate value; (2) pipelines to compute Effort-aware Individual/Group Fairness in the criminal justice and personal finance contexts. Our work may enable AI model auditors to uncover and potentially correct unfair decisions against individuals who have spent significant efforts to improve but are still stuck with systemic disadvantages outside their control.
title Effort-aware Fairness: Incorporating a Philosophy-informed, Human-centered Notion of Effort into Algorithmic Fairness Metrics
topic Artificial Intelligence
Computers and Society
Human-Computer Interaction
Machine Learning
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2505.19317