“AI Fairness: Designing Equal Opportunity Algorithms” with Professor Derek Leben

About this episode

The episode discusses AI fairness and the ethical implications of algorithmic decision-making with Professor Derek Leben.

As artificial intelligence takes on a growing role in decisions about education, jobs, housing, loans, healthcare, and criminal justice, concerns about fairness have become urgent. Because AI systems are trained on data that reflect historical inequalities, they often reproduce or even amplify those disparities. In his book “AI Fairness: Designing Equal Opportunity Algorithms” Professor Derek Leben draws on classic philosophical theories of justice—especially John Rawls’s work—to propose a framework for evaluating the fairness of AI systems. This framework offers a way to think systematically about algorithmic justice: how automated decisions can align with ethical principles of equality and fairness. The book examines the trade-offs among competing fairness metrics and shows that it is often impossible to satisfy them all at once. As a result, organizations must decide which definitions of fairness to prioritize, and regulators must determine how existing laws should apply to AI. In this episode of Bridging the Gaps, I speak with Derek Leben. Derek Leben is Professor of Business Ethics at the Tepper School of Business at Carnegie Mellon University. As founder of the consulting…

People in this episode

Host: Dr Waseem Akhtar

Guest: Professor Derek Leben

Topics covered

• AI fairness
• algorithmic justice
• ethical principles
• historical inequalities
• decision-making

Keywords

• AI
• fairness
• algorithms
• justice
• ethical principles
• historical inequalities
• decision-making

Mentioned in this episode

Organizations: Tepper School of Business, Ethical Algorithms

Books & works: AI Fairness: Designing Equal Opportunity Algorithms

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