用平等理念重构机器学习公平性,超越单纯分配公正。
What Is the Point of Equality in Machine Learning Fairness? Beyond Equality of Opportunity
- 提出结合分配平等与关系平等的综合框架
- 揭示模型偏见中隐含的结构性不公
- 适合关注伦理与社会影响的研究者
机器学习公平性研究日益增长,但其道德基础仍存疑问。现有研究多基于分配平等——即机会等资源应均等分配,认为不公平模型因资源分配不均而错误。本文指出,这种单一视角不完整且可能误导:真正的不公源于结构性不平等——系统性、制度化、持久存在的优势与劣势安排。这在机器学习中表现为两类伤害:分配性伤害(如经济损失)和表征性伤害(如刻板印象、群体抹除)。分配平等可缓解前者,却无法解释为何后者错误,也无法说明为何模型应促进人与人之间的平等关系(即关系平等)。为此,本文提出融合分配平等与关系平等的多维平等框架,借鉴批判社会政治哲学,为应对机器学习造成的全面伤害提供更完整的伦理基础,并提出贯穿全模型流程的实践路径。
原文摘要 · Abstract (English)
Fairness in machine learning (ML) has become a rapidly growing area of research. But why, in the first place, is unfairness in ML wrong? And why should we care about improving fairness? Most fair-ML research implicitly appeals to distributive equality: the idea that desirable benefits and goods, such as opportunities (e.g., Barocas et al., 2023), should be equally distributed across society. Unfair ML models, then, are seen as wrong because they unequally distribute such benefits. This paper argues that this exclusive focus on distributive equality offers an incomplete and potentially misleading ethical foundation. Grounding ML fairness in egalitarianism--the view that equality is a fundamental moral and social ideal--requires challenging structural inequality: systematic, institutional, and durable arrangements that privilege some groups while disadvantaging others. Structural inequality manifests through ML systems in two primary forms: allocative harms (e.g., economic loss) and representational harms (e.g., stereotypes, erasure). While distributive equality helps address allocative harms, it fails to explain why representational harms are wrong--why it is wrong for ML systems to reinforce social hierarchies that stratify people into superior and inferior groups--and why ML systems should aim to foster a society where people relate as equals (i.e., relational equality). To address these limitations, the paper proposes a multifaceted egalitarian framework for ML fairness that integrates both distributive and relational equality. Drawing on critical social and political philosophy, this framework offers a more comprehensive ethical foundation for tackling the full spectrum of harms perpetuated by ML systems. The paper also outlines practical pathways for implementing the framework across the entire ML pipeline.
Thank you to arXiv for use of its open access interoperability. PaperDance 不是 arXiv 官方产品;中文卡片由大模型生成,请以原文为准。