Besides its common use cases in epidemiology, political, and social sciences, causality turns out to be crucial in evaluating the fairness of automated decisions, both in a legal and everyday sense. We provide arguments and examples, of why causality is particularly important for fairness evaluation. In particular, we point out the social impact of non-causal predictions and the legal anti-discrimination process that relies on causal claims. We conclude with a discussion about the challenges and limitations of applying causality in practical scenarios as well as possible solutions.

翻译：除在流行病学、政治学和社会科学中的常见应用外，因果关系在法律和日常意义上对于评估自动化决策的公平性至关重要。我们提供了因果关系对公平性评估具有特殊重要性的论据和案例，尤其指出非因果预测的社会影响以及依赖因果主张的法律反歧视程序。最后，我们讨论了在实践场景中应用因果关系所面临的挑战与局限性，并提出了可能的解决方案。