Reflexive Design for Fairness and Other Human Values in Formal Models

TL;DR

This paper proposes a reflexive design framework for formal models that incorporate human values like fairness, emphasizing the importance of understanding their limits and developing four key reflexive values to improve their normative integration.

Contribution

It introduces four reflexive values—value fidelity, appropriate accuracy, value legibility, and value contestation—to guide the design of formal models with human values.

Findings

Identifies conceptual limits of formal modeling for human values.

Develops four reflexive values to improve value integration.

Provides a methodology for reflexive design of formal models.

Abstract

Algorithms and other formal models purportedly incorporating human values like fairness have grown increasingly popular in computer science. In response to sociotechnical challenges in the use of these models, designers and researchers have taken widely divergent positions on how formal models incorporating aspects of human values should be used: encouraging their use, moving away from them, or ignoring the normative consequences altogether. In this paper, we seek to resolve these divergent positions by identifying the main conceptual limits of formal modeling, and develop four reflexive values--value fidelity, appropriate accuracy, value legibility, and value contestation--vital for incorporating human values adequately into formal models. We then provide a brief methodology for reflexively designing formal models incorporating human values.