The Covid-19 pandemic has accelerated the development of unconventional technologies to monitor and contain the virus spread, many equipped with Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning in particular. These innovations offer promising benefits for the public health surveillance sector, however, with their rapid deployment in crisis times, can likewise trigger risky consequences if not developed with an ethical mindset. In our October 2021 Research Brief, we focus on the ethical principle of fairness and investigate how fairness issues can arise within such tools, potential mitigation approaches, as well as how fairness relates to other ethics concepts.
