There is usually a tension between procedural fairness and accuracy -- attempts to achieve the most commonly advocated forms of procedural fairness increase the algorithm’s overall error rate. In substance or procedureOf course, most of us would be reluctant to give up on procedural fairness entirely. Yet substantive fairness often matters more -- at least, many of us have intuitions that seem to be consistent with this. Perhaps we tolerate this unfairness because, through mitigating the effects of past oppression, affirmative action tends to promote substantive fairness. If substantive fairness generally matters more than procedural fairness, countering biased algorithms through changes to algorithmic design may not be the best path to fairness after all.

Source: Dhaka Tribune January 22, 2019 16:18 UTC