Negotiating AI fairness: a call for rebalancing power relations

Abstract AI fairness is at the center of many debates, but there are different perspectives on what it entails. Currently, purely technical algorithmic fairness approaches dominate the scene, often neglecting a sufficiently well-rounded view of social implications and ignoring the voices of lay people. With the end goal of overcoming these issues, we investigate and synthesize the points of contact and differences among computer science, sociological and lay people perspectives and move towards a lay-socio-technical view of AI fairness. To this end, we conducted interviews with experts from the computer and social sciences, as well as a survey and co-creation workshops with lay people. Our results show that there are sometimes conflicting views on AI fairness across these perspectives. An integrated view requires two processes of negotiation: (a) between computer and social sciences, and (b) between experts from both disciplines and lay people. We identify strategies for supporting these processes, but we state that they are ultimately possible only if there is a rebalance of current power relations between the disciplines, and between experts and lay people.