Fairness in technological design.

Area of Science:

• Technology and Society
• Ethics in Design
• Distributive Justice

Background:

• Technological advancements increasingly raise complex ethical questions regarding fairness.
• Assessing the fairness implications of design choices is crucial for equitable societal impact.
• Existing frameworks may not adequately capture the trade-offs inherent in technology design.

Purpose of the Study:

• To propose a visual, graphical methodology for analyzing the implications of technological design on fairness.
• To provide a framework for identifying and exploring how design predictions can create conflicts between different stakeholder interests.
• To examine the appropriateness of trade-offs in design configurations concerning fairness and distributive justice.

Main Methods:

• Utilizing the Taylor-Russell diagram as a central visual and graphical tool.
• Analyzing a diverse range of case studies including surveillance, automotive safety, civic information, and international food distribution systems.
• Applying the methodology to identify and clarify fairness issues within specific technological designs.

Main Results:

• The Taylor-Russell diagram effectively illustrates how design configurations represent trade-offs between the interests of various constituencies.
• Analysis of diverse examples demonstrates the methodology's applicability across different domains of technology design.
• The methodology highlights that design choices can inherently pit the interests of different groups against one another.

Conclusions:

• The proposed methodology offers a valuable tool for identifying and clarifying fairness issues in technology design.
• While effective for analysis, the methodology does not constitute a general theory of fairness.
• Achieving fair solutions requires integrating this methodology with additional ethical principles and concepts.