What Is Disparate Impact?
Disparate Impact is a form of discrimination that occurs when a facially neutral practice disproportionately disadvantages a protected group, regardless of intent.
Disparate Impact — a form of discrimination that occurs when a facially neutral practice disproportionately disadvantages a protected group, regardless of intent.
Disparate impact is central to AI bias law because AI discrimination is rarely intentional — it emerges from data and proxies. A hiring algorithm that never considers gender can still produce disparate impact if it weights features correlated with gender. US law (Title VII, the "four-fifths rule"), the UK Equality Act 2010 (indirect discrimination), and Australian anti-discrimination law all reach disparate impact. This is why bias testing focuses on outcomes across groups, not just whether protected attributes were used as inputs.
Source: Griggs v Duke Power (1971); Equality Act 2010; NYC LL144
Plain-language explanation
Disparate impact is central to AI bias law because AI discrimination is rarely intentional — it emerges from data and proxies. A hiring algorithm that never considers gender can still produce disparate impact if it weights features correlated with gender. US law (Title VII, the "four-fifths rule"), the UK Equality Act 2010 (indirect discrimination), and Australian anti-discrimination law all reach disparate impact. This is why bias testing focuses on outcomes across groups, not just whether protected attributes were used as inputs.
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