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The question of what's fair illuminates the question of what's hard

Computational complexity theorists have discovered a surprising new way to understand what makes certain problems hard.

For computational complexity theorists, who study the relative hardness of different problems, this ability to simplify has long helped them understand unwieldy mathematical functions. As institutions have become more comfortable using algorithms to decide who gets a bank loan, for example, or who should receive parole, it’s become more important to have a formal way of checking that human biases aren’t creeping into the calculations. From left: Cynthia Dwork, Salil Vadhan, and Sílvia Casacuberta adapted a tool from the field of algorithmic fairness to improve our understanding of certain hard problems.

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