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Ok, so if you're hiring professional arm wrestlers, and your model looks at bicep muscle mass, is that discrimination because it selects against women?

If you're hiring therapists, and your candidates take a personality test, and your ML model weights the 'nurturing' feature highly, is that discrimination because it selects against men?

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Underlying your examples is the implication that a preference shouldn't be considered discriminatory if the trait being selected for correlates with fitness. I agree with this position!

What I don't agree with is the assumption that, in this case, the preferred traits do correlate with fitness, since there's at least one — gender — for which this model is biased even though it has no apparent correlation.

Ya, I just mean to say that uncorrelation with fitness is an important qualifier.

Separate it one step further -- hiring decisions are all too easy to pin as discriminatory. What if a site shows ads for a special offer on protein shakes for people with higher bicep mass since they are in the target market? Is that discriminating against women?

How the hell are you targeting ads with "bicep mass"?

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